The Chinese city of Wuhan is drawing up plans to test its entire population of 11 million people for Covid-19, state media report.
The plan appears to be in its early stages, with all districts in Wuhan told to submit details as to how testing could be done within 10 days.
It comes after Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, recorded six new cases over the weekend.
Prior to this, it had seen no new cases at all since 3 April.
Wuhan, which was in strict lockdown for 11 weeks, began re-opening on 8 April.
For a while it seemed like life was getting back to normal as schools re-opened, businesses slowly emerged and public transport resumed operations. But the emergence of a cluster of cases - all from the same residential compound - has now threatened the move back to normalcy.
'The ten-day-battle'
According to report by The Paper, quoting a widely circulated internal document, every district in the city has been told to draw up a 10-day testing plan by noon on Tuesday.
Each district is responsible for coming up with its own plan based on the size of their population and whether or not there is currently an active outbreak in the district.
The document, which refers to the test plan as the "10-day battle", also says that older people and densely populated communities should be prioritised when it comes to testing.
Peng Zhiyong, director of the intensive care unit of the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, instead that testing was instead likely to be targeted at medical workers, vulnerable people and those who'd had close contacts with a case.
Another Wuhan University director suggested that a large percentage of Wuhan's population - around 3-5 million - had already been tested, and Wuhan was "capable" of testing the remaining 6-8 million in a 10-days period.
To put the goal into context, the US now conducts around 300,000 tests each day, according to the White House. So far, it's tested almost 9 million people in total.
On Chinese social media site Weibo, people have been raising questions about whether such a large number of tests can be carried out in just a matter of days.
"It is impossible to test so many people," said one commenter, who also questioned how much it would cost.
Another said that such tests should have been carried out before Wuhan re-opened its doors to the rest of China.
Taking no chances
Stephen McDonnell, BBC News, Beijing
Wuhan was where this global emergency started and there was relief when the first cluster site seemed to come out the other side. There would also be despair if the first lockdown city was to be engulfed again by the coronavirus.
Not letting this happen has become a priority for the Chinese government.
When a new domestic infection appeared in the city three days ago you could feel the concern over 1,000km away in Beijing.
Then five others were infected by the 89-year old man previously declared "asymptomatic", and the manager of their housing complex was removed.
However, sacking local officials in this way might also encourage a tendency to hide future cases.
China's most powerful seven people, in the Politburo Standing Committee, met last week to discuss improving the country's early warning system for outbreaks like this.
They could start by easing the "no mistakes at all costs" approach to governing, in which those who reveal the bad news can end up being punished.
China reported just one new cases on Monday, bringing the total number of cases to 82,919, with the death toll at 4,633.
Hundreds of asymptomatic cases are being monitored by Wuhan health authorities
Five coronavirus patients died in a hospital blaze early today due to a short circuit igniting a ventilator machine, said reports in Russia.
An inferno swept through an intensive care Covid-19 ward at a hospital in St Petersburg.
A total of 150 patients were evacuated from St. George City Hospital, said the emergency services.
All five people who died were connected to ventilators at the time, it is understood.
An inferno swept through an intensive care Covid-19 ward at a hospital in St Petersburg. Pictured, damage to the ward's windows
Eleven in the same sixth floor ward were rescued and taken to lower floor of the hospital.
'An electric equipment malfunction, short-circuit failure, is seen as the preliminary reason,' said an emergency services spokesman.
Fire destroyed 108 square feet inside the hospital after the sudden blaze at 6.20am (4.20am UK time).
A total of 150 patients were evacuated from St. George City Hospital, said the emergency services
Eleven in the same sixth floor ward were rescued and taken to lower floor of the hospital
Smoke was seen pouring from the window at the hospital which had been recategorised to cope with coronavirus patients during the pandemic
Fire rescue crews gathered in the hospital's car park and a nearby road to tackle the blaze
The emergency services later said the fire had been localised.
Smoke was seen pouring from the window at the hospital which had been recategorised to cope with coronavirus patients during the pandemic.
It is the second similar fire in three days in Russia.
Workers of the St Petersburg Fire Service undergo disinfection after a fire at St George's Municipal Hospital
A Russian Emergency Situation worker disinfects two men near the scene of the deadly fire
Fire destroyed 108 square feet inside the hospital (pictured) after the sudden blaze at 6.20am (4.20am UK time)
On Saturday a 95-year-old woman Evdokia Butryakova died in a Moscow hospital when an oxygen balloon supplying a ventilator exploded causing a fire major which led to 295 patients being evacuated.
The charred body of the pensioner was found after the blaze was extinguished at Clinical Hospital 50.
The authorities are examining the causes of both fires.
Five Covid-19 patients die in Russia hospital fire - BBC News
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AFP
A fire at a St Petersburg hospital has killed five coronavirus patients in an intensive care unit.
The blaze was apparently started by a short-circuit in a ventilator, Russian news agencies reported.
The fire has now been contained and 150 people have been evacuated from the hospital, the country's emergency ministry said. It is not clear how many people have been injured.
All of the patients who died had been on ventilators.
"The ventilators are working to their limits. Preliminary indications are that it was overloaded and caught fire, and that was the cause," a source at St Petersburg emergencies department told the Interfax news agency.
St Petersburg, with a population of approximately 4.9 million people, has 5,483 hospital beds for Covid-19 patients.
The city has Russia's third-highest infection rate, with 7,700 infected patients and 56 recorded deaths.
The St George Hospital in the Vyborg district had been converted to a Covid-19 hospital at the end of March.
The news of the fire comes as the country is starting to ease lockdown restrictions. Construction, farming and factory workers are resuming their duties.
Russia now has the third-highest number of confirmed infections worldwide. On Monday, it reported a record daily rise of 11,656 cases, bringing the official total to 221,344.
That means Russia now has more confirmed cases than both Italy and the UK.
White House staff have been ordered to wear masks when entering the West Wing after two aides tested positive for coronavirus.
The White House personnel office has said that staff must cover their faces at all times except when seated at their desks, socially distant from colleagues.
The directive comes after an aide for Vice-President Mike Pence and a valet for President Trump fell ill.
Mr Trump said he required the policy.
Appearing without a mask in the Rose Garden for a press briefing on Monday, however, the president claimed he did not need to follow the directive because he kept "far away from everyone", and played down the White House infections.
"We have hundreds of people a day pouring into the White House" each day, he said. "I think we're doing a good job containing it."
Three members of the White House coronavirus task force went into self-isolation for two weeks after possible exposure to the illness.
They include Dr Anthony Fauci, who has become the public face of the fight against the virus in the US.
Mr Pence's press secretary Katie Miller, the wife of Trump aide Stephen Miller, tested positive for the virus on Friday.
Her diagnosis came after a valet for US President Donald Trump was also confirmed to have the illness.
Mr Trump shrugged of the White House spread, saying it was "basically one person" who had contracted the virus and that people who were in contact had since tested negative.
Mr Trump said more funds would be made available to increase testing in states.
The government is to provide $11bn (£8.9bn) to states to meet testing goals this month. States were asked how many tests they hope to conduct in May, and will be given supplies to match the targets.
Senior White House officials who come into regular contact with Mr Trump are currently being tested daily for the coronavirus.
Pressed by journalists on when all Americans could expect to have access to testing, Mr Trump said: "If someone wants to be tested right now they will be able to be tested". The claim is heavily disputed.
Donald Trump held his press conference to talk about the growing number of coronavirus tests available to Americans, but it was the impact of the pandemic on the White House itself that became the focus of attention.
At an event held in the Rose Garden last week, none of the attendees, including Vice-President Mike Pence, wore masks. Four days later, Pence - regularly at the president's side - was notably absent, his press secretary having tested positive for the virus days ago. Everyone in attendance, including presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, had masks, after a directive requiring them for all White House staff.
It was an order that applied to everyone - that is, except the president, who continued to decline the protection.
This made for a striking contrast, as Trump spoke of the "pent-up demand" and "enthusiasm" in the US for reopening businesses and easing government-ordered social distance restrictions, while denying that the system that protects White House personnel from infection had broken down.
"We have a lot of people coming in and out," he said. "We are running a country."
It underlines a fundamental challenge facing the US in the days ahead. Can the US economy reopen and recover when even the White House isn't safe?
What's going on with testing?
For weeks, Mr Trump has sought to encourage an easing of lockdown measures throughout the US, arguing it was time to get back to work amid dire economic news.
However, public health experts have warned that easing restrictions too early could lead to a resurgence of transmissions and a second coronavirus wave.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had issued guidelines suggesting that lockdowns should not be eased unless a region has seen 14 days of declines in infections and be able to conduct 30 tests for every thousand residents.
According to the CovidTracking Project, a charity, they US conducted an average of 248,000 daily tests in the first week of May.
According to the White House, the number has increased to 300,000 a day, but prominent public health researchers say at least 900,000 daily tests are needed before the US should reopen.
As of this week, the US has tested only 2.75% of its 330 million population, and no state has tested 10% of residents. In over a dozen states where lockdown measures have been relaxed, including Texas, South Carolina and Arizona, less than 2% of residents have been tested.
Last week, the White House rejected the CDC's reopening guidance, but some states are adopting the standards.
