WUHAN BEGINS TESTING 8 MN CITIZENS

BEIJING: Some eight million residents of Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged late last year, are undergoing the world’s largest mass testing for Covid-19.

The campaign to test millions is being closely watched by countries all over the world because of its scale and feasibility. Three million Wuhan residents had already been tested since April, state media reported.

The current tests are being carried out five weeks after Wuhan opened up on April 8 after a 76-day lockdown. Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, was badly affected by the outbreak, accounting for over 50,000 infections and around 3,800 deaths.

The mass testing is part of China’s efforts to fortify against a potential “second wave” after a cluster of cases emerged in a residential community over the last weekend in Wuhan. Videos of long queues of people lining up in front of residential communities circulated on social media as testing began earlier this week.

Medics dressed in protective gear could be seen guiding residents. Notices had been dispatched through local Communist Party of China volunteers to residential communities.

Earlier this week, Wuhan authorities said all residents will be tested, but that announcement seems to have been recalibrated.

Wuhan will “arrange nucleic acid tests for all residents who have not been tested before, in order to better know the number of asymptomatic cases of the novel coronavirus,” news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.

The initial announcement that all tests will be carried out within 10 days has been tweaked as well. Each district of the city will now get 10 days to complete the tests.

The decision to carry out largescale testing was made as Wuhan continued to report asymptomatic infections daily.

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