Wuhan tests one-third residents for coronavirus

BEIJING: Chinese city of Wuhan – where the coronavirus first emerged late last year – has tested more than three million residents since April as it steps up efforts to test the remainder eleven million population.

Wuhan will conduct tests on everyone in the city, with the goal of getting a clear number of asymptomatic cases as businesses and schools reopen, state-owned media reported.

The priority will be residents who have not been tested before, people living in residential compounds that had previous cases of the virus, as well as older estates or compounds in densely populated estates.

Wuhan reported a cluster of infections over the weekend, the first since an almost total lockdown of the city was lifted on April 8, raising fears of a second wave. The latest cases were previously recorded as asymptomatic, people who had the virus but showed no symptoms.

State media did not say how many people had been tested before April 1. An international news agency, citing an internal document to district officials, reported on May 11 that a city-wide campaign of nucleic acid tests would take place over 10 days.

Wuhan conducted 1.79 million tests from April 1 to May 13, according to Reuters’ calculations based on daily reports published by the city’s health commission. The official test number for May 14 will be published on Friday.

Recently, Wuhan has detected several to more than a dozen asymptomatic infections every day. These patients are all treated in isolation but can still trigger concern in the community.

Some experts say the mass testing is unprecedented in scale and shows the level of concern, while others warn on potential testing errors due to the sheer size of the sampling.

China’s National Health Commission reported four new confirmed cases in the mainland on May 14, up from three cases a day earlier. All of the new cases were locally transmitted and the number of new asymptomatic cases fell slightly to 11 from 12 a day earlier.

The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China now stands at 82,933 while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,633. China does not include asymptomatic virus carriers in its tally of confirmed cases and does not disclose the overall number of asymptomatic cases in the country.