China plans to test the entire city of Wuhan in just 10 days after new COVID-19 cases
Wuhan, the Chinese city of 11 million where the COVID-19 pandemic originated, reported six new cases over the weekend, its first new infections in 35 days. None of the new cases were imported, and China plans to get to the bottom of this cluster, announcing a plan to test the entire city in 10 days, CNN reports. Wuhan authorities plan to use nucleic acid tests, which are more effective and complicated to perform than tests that look for a body's immune response.
If all 11 million people in Wuhan are tested, that would require producing and processing tests for a population greater than the entire country of Greece — in 10 days. The U.S. has conducted 9.4 million tests during the entire pandemic, the COVID Tracking Project reported Monday.
China's official coronavirus figures have always had an asterisk by them, and a large number of positive results from a city-wide testing program would reflect poorly on Wuhan's previously reported data, CNN notes. The head official of Wuhan's Changqing area, where the new cases were found, was already removed from his post for failing to prevent the outbreak, China Daily reported Monday.
South Korea and Germany have also reported setbacks in their largely successful efforts to beat back the coronavirus, highlighting the tenacity of the new virus and the risks of relaxing mitigation efforts.
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