All residents
of China’s Wuhan will be tested for COVID-19 after the city, where the
coronavirus pandemic outbreak started in December, 2019, reported its first confirmed
case in over a year. The city of 11 million people is “swiftly launching comprehensive
nucleic acid testing of all residents,” senior official Li Tao said at a press
conference on Tuesday.

On Monday,
authorities confirmed that seven locally transmitted cases had been detected
among migrant workers in the city, the first domestic infection after over a
year as the city quashed the initial outbreak with stringent lockdown measures
in early 2020, AFP reported.

With a
fresh surge in cases being reported in many parts of the country, authorities have
imposed stay-at-home orders in entire cities, cut domestic transport links and started
mass-testing people in recent days.

China
reported 61 new cases on Tuesday, after an outbreak of the more contagious
Delta variant spread to dozens of cities as the infection among airport
cleaners in Nanjing sparked a fresh outbreak that has been reported across the
country.

National
capital Beijing and other major cities have tested millions of residents, while
quarantining all close contacts and sealing off entire residential complexes.

The city of
Yangzhou, near the eastern province of Nanjing, became the latest to confine
its residents at home after 40 new infections were recorded following large-scale
testing over the past day.   

Over 1.3
million residents of Yangzhou have now been ordered to stay at home, with each
household allowed to only send one person to shop for essentials every day, the
city government confirmed on Tuesday.

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The move
comes in line with similar measures taken by other cities, such as the tourist
destination of Zhangjiajie in central China’s Hunan province and the city of
Zhuzhou nearby, placing over two million residents combined under restrictions in
recent days.

The
infection spread from Nanjing to Hunan last month, after people infected at the
Nanjing airport attended theatre performances in Zhangjiajie.

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Authorities
have since been tracking down thousands of other theatre attendees and urging
people to not go to places where cases have been found.

Beijing has
banned tourists from entering the capital during the peak summer season and asked
residents to not travel unless necessary, with officials saying they will “spare
no expense” to defend the city against the virus.