On November 20, 2020, Professor LU Zuxun's team from the School of Public Health, published an online article entitled Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearby ten million residents of Wuhan, China, The results of the nationwide nucleic acid test (hereinafter referred to as the nationwide nucleic acid test) in Wuhan novel coronavirus were publicly reported.

Stringent COVID-19 control measures were imposed in Wuhan between January 23 and April 8, 2020. Estimates of the prevalence of infection following the release of restrictions could inform post-lockdown pandemic management. Here, we describe a city-wide SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening programme between May 14 and June 1, 2020 in Wuhan. All city residents aged six years or older were eligible and 9,899,828 (92.9%) participated. No new symptomatic cases and 300 asymptomatic cases (detection rate 0.303/10,000, 95% CI 0.270–0.339/10,000) were identified. There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases. 107 of 34,424 previously recovered COVID-19 patients tested positive again (re-positive rate 0.31%, 95% CI 0.423–0.574%). The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Wuhan was therefore very low five to eight weeks after the end of lockdown.

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first reported in December 2019, and was classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 20201. Following strict lockdown measures, the COVID-19 epidemic was generally under control in China, and the whole country has progressed into a post-lockdown phase. In this phase, countries face new problems and challenges, including how to accurately assess the post-lockdown risk of the COVID-19 epidemic, how to avoid new waves of COVID-19 outbreaks, and how to facilitate the resumption of economy and normal social life. As the city most severely affected by COVID-19 in China, Wuhan had been under lockdown measures from January 23 until April 8, 2020. During the first 2 months after city’s reopening, there were only a few sporadic COVID-19 cases in Wuhan (six newly confirmed cases from April 8 to May 10, 20202). However, there was still concern about the risk of COVID-19 in Wuhan, which seriously affected the resumption of industrial production and social services, and hampered the normal lives of residents. In order to ascertain the current status of the COVID-19 epidemic, the city government of Wuhan carried out a comprehensive citywide nucleic acid screening of SARS-CoV-2 infection from May 14, 2020 to June 1, 2020.

The citywide screening of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Wuhan is a mass screening programme in post-lockdown settings, and provided invaluable experiences or lessons with international relevance as more countries and cities around the world entering the post-lockdown phase. In this study, we report the organisation process, detailed technical methods used, and results of this citywide nucleic acid screening.

There were 10,652,513 eligible people aged ≥6 years in Wuhan (94.1% of the total population). The nucleic acid screening was completed in 19 days (from May 14, 2020 to Jun 1, 2020), and tested a total of 9,899,828 persons from the 10,652,513 eligible people (participation rate, 92.9%). Of the 9899,828 participants, 9,865,404 had no previous diagnosis of COVID-19, and 34,424 were recovered COVID-19 patients.

The screening of the 9,865,404 participants without a history of COVID-19 found no newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, and identified 300 asymptomatic positive cases with a detection rate of 0.303 (95% CI 0.270–0.339)/10,000. The median age-stratified Ct-values of the asymptomatic cases were shown in Supplementary Table1. Of the 300 asymptomatic positive cases, two cases came from one family and another two were from another family. There were no previously confirmed COVID-19 patients in these two families. A total of 1174 close contacts of the asymptomatic positive cases were traced, and they all tested negative for the COVID-19. There were 34,424 previously recovered COVID-19 cases who participated in the screening. Of the 34,424 participants with a history of COVID-19, 107 tested positive again, giving a repositive rate of 0.310% (95% CI 0.423–0.574%).

Virus cultures were negative for all asymptomatic positive and repositive cases, indicating no “viable virus” in positive cases detected in this study.

All asymptomatic positive cases, repositive cases and their close contacts were isolated for at least 2 weeks until the results of nucleic acid testing were negative. None of detected positive cases or their close contacts became symptomatic or newly confirmed with COVID-19 during the isolation period. In this screening programme, single and mixed testing was performed, respectively, for 76.7% and 23.3% of the collected samples. The asymptomatic positive rates were 0.321 (95% CI 0.282–0.364)/10,000 and 0.243 (95% CI 0.183–0.315)/10,000, respectively.

The 300 asymptomatic positive persons aged from 10 to 89 years, included 132 males (0.256/10,000) and 168 females (0.355/10,000). The asymptomatic positive rate was the lowest in children or adolescents aged 17 and below (0.124/10,000), and the highest among the elderly aged 60 years and above (0.442/10,000) (Table1). The asymptomatic positive rate in females (0.355/10,000) was higher than that in males (0.256/10,000).