Coronavirus: Wuhan to test entire 11m population after spike in new cases

The Chinese city of Wuhan is drawing up plans to test its entire population of 11 million people for Covid-19 after a sharp rise in new cases.

All districts in Wuhan have been told to submit details as to how testing could be done within 10 days, state media report.

It comes after Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, recorded six new cases over the weekend.

Wuhan, which was in strict lockdown for 11 weeks, began re-opening on 8 April. But the emergence of a cluster of cases – all from the same residential compound – has now threatened the return to normalcy.

According to a document detailing the new plan, each district is responsible for coming up with its own plan based on the size of their population and whether or not there is currently an active outbreak in the district, BBC writes.

The document, which refers to the test plan as the “0-day battle”, also says that older people and densely populated communities should be prioritised when it comes to testing.

There are however doubts as several senior health officials quoted by the Global Times newspaper indicated that testing the entire city would be unfeasible and costly.

On Chinese social media site Weibo, people have been raising questions about whether such a large number of tests can be carried out in just a matter of days.

“It is impossible to test so many people,” said one commenter, who also questioned how much it would cost.

Another said that such tests should have been carried out before Wuhan re-opened its doors to the rest of China.