An aerial photo of the Yellow Crane Tower, a landmark in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province, on April 29, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua] 

Experts believe that the once COVID-19 epicenter of Wuhan has become a secure city, as Wuhan health authorities have tested nearly 10 million residents without discovering any new confirmed cases.

From May 14 to June 1, Wuhan tested 9,899,828 people and found no confirmed cases. Among these, asymptomatic COVID-19 cases accounted for only 0.303 out of 10,000, amounting to a total of 300 people.

"We have successfully completed the centralized nucleic acid tests and screenings and basically achieved the goals that anyone who should be tested got tested, and anyone who wished to be tested got tested," said Hu Yabo, executive deputy mayor of Wuhan, on Tuesday. 

Lu Zuxun, a professor of the School of Public Health at Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, explained that the results of concentrated nucleic acid testing showed that, at present, the proportion of asymptomatic cases in Wuhan is extremely low among the entire population, and no instances have been found of the asymptomatic ones infecting others.

Wuhan is the first city in the world to carry out large-scale nucleic acid testing on the entire region’s population. As there is a population of more than 10 million, the city adopted batch testing, which mixes no more than five samples in a single test, to improve efficiency. Only when the result is positive in a group is a second round of individual tests required.

Renowned Chinese epidemiologist Li Lanjuan, a member of the high-level expert group of the National Health Commission and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that the citywide testing in Wuhan was a rare event in the world, which plays an important role in the prevention and control of the pandemic in China and worldwide.

Li said that the proportion of asymptomatic cases in Wuhan is very low. The asymptomatic cases that have been found are all isolated, and everyone else in the outside world is healthy. Nearly 97% of Wuhan's residential complexes have no asymptomatic cases to be found. The Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention also collected samples from tap water, domestic sewage, taxis, buses, subway cars and stations, shopping malls, restaurants, and parks in the city, and they even collected some pet samples. There are a total of 2,314 samples, and all the test results have been negative.

As such, Lu Zuxun, Li Lanjuan and other experts have agreed that "Wuhan is a safe city now."

(You can also read this article at http://www.china.org.cn/china/2020-06/06/content_76133015.htm)