China's Wuhan samples over 11 million for COVID-19 testing

(Photo by Wu Zhizun/Xinhua)

To promptly contain the latest COVID-19 resurgence, central China's Wuhan has collected over 11.23 million samples for nucleic acid testing, local authorities said Saturday.

The city launched a new, all-inclusive testing drive on Aug. 4.

The results from 10.8 million of the samples are available. The health staffers are still checking and confirming, said Li Yang, deputy director of the Hubei provincial center for disease control and prevention at a press conference held by the Hubei provincial epidemic prevention and control headquarters Saturday afternoon.

By Friday, the city had put 157 residential communities under closed-loop management.

Hit hard by COVID-19 in early 2020, Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province with a population of more than 12 million, was the world's first megacity to complete a comprehensive nucleic acid-testing campaign last year.

The city had not reported locally transmitted cases for over a year until seven people tested positive for COVID-19 on Aug. 2.

Hubei Province reported nine new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and 15 asymptomatic ones on Friday, the provincial health commission said Saturday.

Six locally transmitted confirmed cases were registered in the provincial capital Wuhan, while three others were in the city of Jingmen.

All the 15 asymptomatic cases were locally transmitted, including ten cases discovered in Wuhan.

By the end of Friday, there were 47 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Hubei, including 31 locally transmitted cases. There were also 64 asymptomatic cases under medical observation, among whom 38 were locally transmitted.