Coronavirus: Wuhan planning to test 11m residents in 10 days for coronavirus

City officials hoping to wage testing offensive dubbed ‘10-day battle’

Wuhan authorities are hoping to test all 11 million residents for coronavirus within 10 days, state media reports.

The city where the virus was first discovered had recently emerged from a strictly enforced 76-day lockdown.

But after recording no new infections since 3 April, Wuhan officials have confirmed 10 cases in the past weekend – six of whom have now developed respiratory difficulties, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency.

In addition to firing local communist party secretary Zhang Yuxin for alleged “poor management” of the residential community where the six cases were confirmed, authorities are reportedly hoping to wage a testing offensive dubbed the “10-day battle”.

Every district in the city of 11 million people has been told to create an emergency plan by Tuesday for how to test all those within their jurisdiction, official outlet The Paper reports, citing a widely circulated state document.

Districts have been told to prioritise testing older people and particularly densely populated and mobile communities in their plans, reports suggest.

Several experts in state-backed media have been sceptical of how feasible and affordable such a vast testing programme would be.

Director of the intensive care unit of a Wuhan University hospital Peng Zhiyong, indicated to the Global Times on Tuesday that, while he had not yet received details of the testing plan, he did not expect the entire city to be tested.

He said testing everyone would be costly, suggesting that in reality, it will likely focus on close contacts of patients, medical staff, the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions.

Deputy director of Wuhan University’s pathogen biology department Yang Zhanqiu suggested those who have already received a test might not do so again.

“About three to five million residents have been tested and proved healthy, and thus Wuhan is capable to test the remaining 6 to 8 million in 10 days.” Wuhan has about 11 million permanent residents.

The proposed tests are nucleic, rather than antibody tests – meaning they allow for earlier detection but do give a positive result if someone is no longer ill.

The US is reported to be carrying out the largest total number of daily tests in the world at around 300,000 – at which rate it would take 37 days to carry out 11 million.

Meanwhile, governments across the world – including the US – are finding it incredibly difficult to vastly scale-up testing programmes to the scale needed to effectively contact-trace and monitor the virus's spread.

For example, the UK has struggled to consistently carry out 100,000 tests a day – a target it set for 30 April.

Boris Johnson plans to double this by the end of May, but it remains highly unlikely that the initial daily target has been met since April, if it was truly met at all, at one point slumping back below 70,000.

While lockdown restrictions in Wuhan remain tentatively lifted, the community where the new infections have been confirmed have now been placed back under a strict lockdown.

All travel in and out of the Sanmin Community has been suspended, residents have been banned from shopping and exercising, and restaurants with one kilometre have been prohibited from opening, state media reports.