Residents use special passes to enter their community. (Photo by Wang Jing/China Daily)

About one-third of residential communities in the Hubei provincial capital Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, have had no newly confirmed cases in the past two weeks as of Thursday, according to the city's epidemic prevention and control headquarters.

As of 6 pm Thursday, 2,076 residential communities in the city had been listed as epidemic-free communities, the headquarters said on Friday.

A community could win the title if they report no additional cases for at least two weeks and have no resident still on the list of high-risk people - suspected cases, people with fever and close contacts with confirmed infections - in the past 14 days.

Meanwhile, communities that fail to roll out adequate prevention and control measures, including lockdown management, timely disinfections and support of daily necessities to residents, will not be qualified to be laureates, according to the headquarters.

Hu Yabo, vice-mayor of Wuhan, told a recent news conference that there are a total of 7,148 residential communities in the city.

It also said there are 1,171 epidemic-free rural villages in Wuhan as of Thursday.

The headquarters have made public all of the epidemic-free communities and villages online for public supervision and will update the list every three days.