China may test all of Wuhan amid fears of virus comeback
BEIJING (AP) — Authorities in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic first broke out, are planning to test all 11 million residents in the next 10 days, Chinese media reported.
No official announcement has been made, but district officials confirmed receiving marching orders from the city’s coronavirus task force, the reports said. It remained unclear if and how such a monumental testing campaign would happen.
The short order came after the discovery last weekend of a cluster of six infected people at a residential compound in the city, the first new cases in more than a month. China has moved quickly to snuff out new outbreaks wherever they pop up, even as it relaxes restrictions on the movement of people and reopens public attractions to limited numbers of visitors.
Jilin province, which borders North Korea in China's northeast, has suspended all public transport and imposed other restrictions as it battles a fresh outbreak. In neighboring Heilongjiang province, which dealt with its own outbreak recently, the city of Harbin is quarantining anyone coming from Jilin for 14 days and banning them from hotels.
The sudden order appeared to confuse local officials. A man who answered the mayor's hotline in Wuhan said that districts have 10 days to arrange the testing in their respective jurisdictions. But a woman who answered later Wednesday said the tests must be done in the next 10 days.
A major state-owned news website, Jiemian, said it had obtained an implementation plan for the city's Wuchang district that said all residents should be tested by May 20.
Wuhan was the area hit hardest by the coronavirus in China. Of the 4,633 reported deaths nationwide, 4,512 were in Hubei province, including 3,869 in Wuhan, the provincial capital.
China imposed a...
