China ordered massive testing in Wuhan for new COVID-19 outbreak

The coronavirus is back, encouraged by stagnant vaccination rates and new variants, even in countries like china, who believed they had weathered the worst of the pandemic. This Tuesday, the authorities announced a series of massive coronavirus tests in Wuhan, after a series of unusually large COVID-19 outbreaks reached the city where the virus was first identified in late 2019.

Wuhan -a provincial capital of 11 million people in central China, where the virus emerged in December 2019 and which experienced severe containment in the early months of the pandemic- thus joins other cities which have also undergone testing campaigns for the entire population. Three cases were confirmed there on Monday, the first not imported for more than a year.

China largely curbed local infections after first outbreak that devastated Wuhan, and that later it spread to the rest of the country and the entire planet. Authorities have since stopped and controlled the disease on every detection, with rapid quarantines and massive testing to isolate those infected.

Even if current outbreaks still represent a total of a few hundred cases, extended much more than the previous ones and reached several provinces and cities, including the capital, Beijing. Many of the cases identified are due to the contagious delta variant of the virus, which is causing the gatherings in many countries.

The National Health Commission reported 90 new cases Tuesday the day before, 61 from local infections and 29 from people recently arrived from abroad.

Most of the local cases were still in Jiangsu Province, where an epidemic broke out at the airport of Nankeen, the provincial capital, extended to the city of Yangzhou, 105 kilometers (65 miles). Authorities reported 45 new cases, five in Nanjing and 40 in Yangzhou City, which was carrying out a second round of massive tests.

Five other provinces and the cities of Beijing and Shanghai have reported new local cases, less than a dozen per region. In Shanghai, the largest city in the country, a driver working at one of its two main airports tested positive. Beijing has reported a total of five cases in recent days.

Government scientists have pointed out that Chinese vaccines are less effective against newer variants of the virus, but still offer some protection. Only Chinese vaccines are used in the country at the moment, and authorities say they have administered more than 1.6 billion doses.

Third dose?

Compared to the delta variant, other countries are starting to explore the possibility of applying booster vaccines, which some pharmaceutical companies believe could improve the immunity of the most infectious strains of the virus.

Germany said on Monday it would start offeringr third doses for the elderly and at risk groups, citing concerns about “a reduced or rapidly declining immune response” in some people.

A booster vaccine for those who received the two doses of AstraZeneca or the single dose of Johnson & Johnson, according to a document released by the German Ministry of Health, “in the interests of preventive health care”.

(With information from the AP and AFP)

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