Covid: Mass testing in virus epicentre Wuhan in bid to curb coronavirus outbreak

ITV News Asia Editor Debi Edward reports on Wuhan's efforts to stop the virus spreading

The residents of Wuhan, the city in China where Covid-19 was first detected in late 2019, are being mass tested in an attempt to contain an outbreak of coronavirus.

Three cases were confirmed in the city on Monday, the city's first non-imported cases in more than a year.

Wuhan, a provincial capital of 11 million people in central China, is the latest city to undergo city-wide testing.

China has largely curbed Covid-19 after the initial outbreak that devastated Wuhan and over time spread to the rest of the world with quick lockdowns and mass testing.

The current outbreaks, while still in the hundreds of cases in total, have spread much more widely than previous ones and has reached multiple provinces and cities including the capital, Beijing.

Many of the cases have been identified as the highly contagious delta variant that is driving a resurgence in many countries.

Government-affiliated scientists have said that Chinese vaccines are less effective against the new strains of the coronavirus but still offer some protection.

Only Chinese vaccines are currently being given in China, where authorities say more than 1.6 billion doses have been administered.

Wuhan's 11 million residents were put under a strict two-month lockdown on January 23, 2020.

The city's wet market that sold animals has emerged as a probable source of the coronavirus pandemic in a major investigation by the World Health Organization (WHO).