Two weeks of testing, millions of samples and 300 positive returns. Worried about a potential second wave of contamination, the city of Wuhan, the starting point of the pandemic of new coronavirus, which killed 376,000 people worldwide, had launched a vast screening campaign. And the conclusion seems to be that the epidemic has come to a halt.
After lifting the confinement of the city, put under a bell for more than two months, the municipality had tests carried out on a very large scale, not hesitating to spend 900 million yuan (or 113 million euros).
0.003% positive test
From May 14 to June 1, more than 9.8 million people were tested in the metropolis (which has 11 million inhabitants) at the rate of half a million daily tests in large medical tents installed in car parks , in parks or residential areas. Only 300 people tested positive for Covid-19, or 0.003% of the assessed population.
"The figures show that Wuhan is now a safe city," said Feng Zijian, deputy director of the Chinese National Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The 300 positive results come from asymptomatic people, authorities said. However, China does not include them in its statistics on confirmed patients. The official toll in the country populated by 1.4 billion inhabitants remains frozen at 4,634 dead. The vast majority died in Wuhan, where a doctor died again on Tuesday, according to public television CCTV.
VIDEO. When Wuhan celebrated the end of strict confinement