Wuhan authorities announced on Sunday August 8 the end of the vast Covid-19 screening operation among the 11 million inhabitants of this Chinese city.

This was organized after a resurgence in the number of cases, more than a year and a half after the coronavirus appeared there.

Tests carried out since Tuesday have provided "full coverage" of the entire population of this metropolis with the exception of children under the age of six and students who have gone on vacation, Li Tao, a senior municipal official, said in the report. a press conference, according to the Xinhua news agency. 

Wuhan had recorded 37 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases on Saturday while 41 asymptomatic carriers were discovered in the latest round of tests, according to Xinhua.

City officials announced last week that seven cases of contamination had been discovered among migrant workers from other provinces. 

China had practically eradicated the epidemic a year ago, after the emergence of the coronavirus in Wuhan at the end of 2019 and a first outbreak which had led to an extremely severe containment of the population of this city in early 2020, but it is facing a renewed illness.

Combating the expansion of the Delta variant 

Authorities said they had mobilized more than 28,000 caregivers and 2,800 sites for the screening campaign.

The new Delta variant has reached dozens of cities, spreading throughout Chinese territory after the contamination of employees responsible for cleaning planes at Nanjing airport in the east of the country.

Faced with this resurgence of Covid-19, the authorities have decreed the confinement of the population of entire agglomerations and taken measures such as the interruption of internal transport links and the organization of massive screenings.

Beijing has also tightened restrictions on Chinese travel abroad.

Immigration officials on Wednesday warned they would stop issuing ordinary passports and other documents to leave China for "non-imperative and non-urgent" reasons.

With AFP

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