China mandates coronavirus tests for key public employees leaving Wuhan
18 April, 2020
China ordered on Saturday (Apr 18) that anyone in Wuhan working in certain service-related jobs must have a coronavirus test if they want to leave the city.
The order employs the central city, where in fact the coronavirus emerged late this past year, lifted a 70-day lockdown that but ended the epidemic there.
People in Wuhan who work in nursing, education, security and other sectors with high contact with the public must have a nucleic acid test before leaving, the National Health Commission said within an order.
The government of Hubei province, of which Wuhan is capital, can pay for the tests, the commission said.
Since the town relaxed its lockdown restrictions persons who found its way to there before Chinese New Year, when the virus was peaking in China, are allowed to get back to their homes.
People working in other sectors looking to leave Wuhan should take voluntary tests prior to going.
Within a week of arrival at their destinations, persons who can present test results showing they don't carry the virus, as well as a clean bill of health on a health app, can get back to work.
Everyone else must spend 2 weeks in quarantine before time for work.
Authorities have worked with the China's tech giants to devise a colour-based health code system, retrieved via mobile app, that uses geolocation data and self-reported information to indicate one's health status.
Wuhan will increase its efforts to research asymptomatic coronavirus cases and confirm the occurrence of antibodies in people, which might advise immunity, the commission said.
Wuhan, which makes up about 60 per cent of infections in China and 84 % of the death toll as of Saturday, has been testing inhabitants aggressively throughout the virus' breakout and several companies had recently been asking workers from the town to undergo tests before resuming work.
Wuhan revised up its death toll from the coronavirus by 1,290 on Friday, taking the city's toll to 3,869, as a result of incorrect reporting, delays and omissions, especially in the chaotic first stages of the outbreak, authorities said.
China national death toll is 4,632 from 82,719 cases.
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