China on Tuesday announced that it would start mass testing in the city of Wuhan, the ground-zero of the novel coronavirus pandemic that emerged in late 2019, after new cases were detected in the city.

Axar.az reports citing Anadolu Agency that the local administration in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, said it would conduct city-wide COVID-19 testing while it "upgraded its epidemic response measures in the face of the recent coronavirus infections, locking down the area where local COVID-19 infections have been reported while upgrading its risk levels."

All schools have been closed.

Amid a fresh outbreak of the pandemic in the country, China's National Health Commission said in a statement that of 98 new cases reported on Monday, 55 were locally transmitted, including 40 that were detected in Jiangsu province, two in the capital Beijing, and two in the central Hubei province. Wuhan is the capital of Hubei.

The Global Times report said Wuhan reported seven local COVID-19 cases on Monday -- the first cases since June 2020. It was here that the first anti-coronavirus lockdown in the world was imposed, extending for 75 days since mid-January last year