Authorities in Wuhan yesterday said that they would test its entire population for COVID-19 after the central Chinese city where the coronavirus emerged reported its first local infections in more than a year.
China is battling its largest outbreak in months, confining the residents of entire cities to their homes, cutting transport links and rolling out mass testing as the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 challenges its zero-virus strategy and homegrown vaccines.
Beijing had previously boasted of its success in crushing the virus, allowing the economy to rebound and normal life to return, while swathes of the globe have struggled with the virus that has killed more than 4 million people worldwide.
Photo: AFP
However, the latest outbreak is threatening China’s success, with more than 400 domestic cases reported since the middle of last month when a cluster among airport cleaners in Nanjing sparked infections in more than 20 cities across more than a dozen provinces.
Wuhan, a city of 11 million, is “swiftly launching comprehensive nucleic acid testing of all residents,” senior city official Li Tao (李濤) told a news conference yesterday.
Authorities on Monday announced that seven locally transmitted infections had been found among migrant workers in the city, breaking a year-long streak without domestic cases after Wuhan squashed an initial outbreak with an unprecedented lockdown early last year.
Meanwhile, the holiday destination of Zhangjiajie in Hunan Province abruptly announced yesterday that no one would be allowed to leave the city, after closing tourist attractions and encouraging visitors to leave last week.
“All residents, tourists and other personnel are forbidden to leave Zhangjiajie,” a brief notice published in the Zhangjiajie Daily said.
Major Chinese cities have now tested millions of residents, while cordoning off residential compounds and placing close contacts under quarantine.
China yesterday reported 61 new domestic cases.
The eastern city of Yangzhou, near Nanjing, was the latest local government to order residents to stay home after large-scale testing detected 40 new infections in the previous 24 hours.
The more than 1.3 million residents of Yangzhou’s urban core are now confined to their homes, with each household allowed to send only one person outside per day to shop for necessities, the city government said yesterday.
The outbreak spread to Hunan Province from Nanjing last month after people in the airport cluster attended theater performances in Zhangjiajie. Officials have since been desperately tracking down thousands of fellow theatergoers and urging tourists not to travel to areas where cases have been found.
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