Almost 4,000 residential communities in Wuhan, epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, are free of COVID-19 infections, a senior local official said on Thursday. 

A total of 3,945 residential communities in the city have been designated as "infection-free" communities by the end of Wednesday, accounting for 55.5 percent of all communities in the city, said Hu Shuguang, chairman of the Wuhan Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. 

To qualify as an infection-free community, the community must have no new confirmed infection for 14 days, and all suspected cases, close contact and people with fever symptoms in the community in the past 14 days cannot become confirmed cases, Hu said at a news conference. 

The city plans to gradually increase the scale of infection-free communities into infection-free street, district and city, he said. 

Luo Ping, an official with the Wuhan COVID-19 prevention and control team, said the purpose of designating infection-free communities is to let people witness the progress of the epidemic control efforts and have confidence in the fight against the epidemic. 

Residents in infection-free communities can move freely within the community and the number of days a community is selected as infection-free ones can be used to deduct the 14-day quarantine period for people to resume work, she said.