China’s Wuhan to test ‘all residents’ after Delta variant found

Gulf Today Report

China reported on Tuesday 90 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the mainland, compared with 98 a day earlier, according to the National Health Commission.

Of the new infections, 61 were locally transmitted, the health authority said. That compares with 55 local cases a day earlier.

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Authorities in Wuhan on Tuesday said they would test its entire population for Covid-19 after the place where the virus emerged in late 2019 confirmed its first domestic cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant.

China's Wuhan city will test all of its 12 million residents for the coronavirus, had reported no local coronavirus cases since mid-May last year but on Monday, authorities confirmed three new cases of the Delta variant.

Picture used for illustrative purposes only.

Li Qiang, an official in the city, the capital of central Hubei province, told a news briefing that "To ensure that everyone in the city is safe, city-wide nucleic acid testing will be quickly launched for all people to fully screen out positive results and asymptomatic infections."

Beijing had previously boasted of its success in crushing the virus, allowing the economy to rebound and normal life to return while swathes of the globe have struggled with the pandemic that has killed more than four million people worldwide.

But the latest outbreak is threatening China's success with more than 400 domestic cases reported since mid-July when a cluster among airport cleaners in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, sparked infections in over 20 cities across more than a dozen provinces.

The new cases in Wuhan, along with infections in the nearby cities of Jingzhou and Huanggang since Saturday, were linked to cases found in Huaian city in Jiangsu province, said Li Yang, vice director of Hubei's provincial disease control centre.

The outbreak in Jiangsu is believed to have begun in the provincial capital of Nanjing, with the Delta variant mostly likely introduced on a flight from Russia, officials have said.