Wuhan, China is testing 11 million people, looking for the coronavirus. What will it find matters to the market.
Wuhan is on the prowl for any remaining coronavirus pathogens flying through the air, or hanging out on surfaces in this Chinese city of roughly 11 million people. The public health authorities have given themselves 10 days to test everyone. So far, according to CGTN, the state run broadcaster, they’ve tested 200,000, though this may have been something they did on one day, Sunday.
How many tested positive? We don’t know.
Wuhan is now infamously known for two things — wet markets — places some would consider disgusting shops where they slaughter exotic animals for food — and, even worse, the quick spreading, global phenomenon known as the second coming of SARS. Or in science parlance, SARS-CoV-2.
This undertaking, to test 11 million in 10 days, or 1.1 million daily, is going to shed a bright light on the virus, and just how long-lasting, quick spreading, and deadly the COVID-19 disease that it causes really is.
With a city on lockdown on the Russian border for the past six weeks, the last thing the Chinese need is for Wuhan to rewind the clock to January 23, when the city began a nearly two month lockdown.
What happened in Wuhan would, to some degree, also happen in Milan, in Paris, and in New York. No one wants Wuhan to go through this again, because if they do, it will send a signal to the market that it is just a matter of time before New York is stuck in lockdown again, too.
The market is paying attention this week to China stimulus whispers.
But it should pay just as much attention to the Wuhan testing. It might tell us a lot about what to expect from the coronavirus post-pandemic. It could also be a bigger market mover than stimulus, something everyone is already expecting.
Let’s game this out.
Let’s say we get the numbers: 11 million have been tested. So how many have it? It can’t be just 66,000, because the last time we were told that Wuhan had 66,000 or so (that was actually the entire province of Hubei and not just Wuhan), they were busy building emergency hospitals and over 4,000 people lost their lives, we are told.
If they tell us again that there is a similar number with the coronavirus in a second wave, then it lends credence to criticisms that their first wave numbers were misleading. This is especially true if we don’t see them suddenly re-erecting temporary hospitals.
China’s “wrong guess” on its first wave is bad for China because the country has been trying to tell the world that, despite a few missteps and some bad actors in Hubei, they were honest.
