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One hundred mini-parks are going to be opened by the end of the year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the original epicentre of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

The swift move appears to be aimed at encouraging locals to spend more time in green, outdoor spaces, rather than in condensed, urban areas.

According to the official People’s Daily newspaper, normally about 40 “mini-parks” are built in the city every year. If this new goal is realised, most citizens will have a park within a five-minute walk of home.

The local government has been seeking to reassure people that a second wave of Covid-19 is unlikely in the city in recent days. Wuhan has just concluded a drive to test all of its 11 million citizens in order to identify any asymptomatic carriers of the virus.

The People’s Daily says the parks will be between 300 and 5,000 square metres (3229 – 53819 sq ft), and will serve additional purposes in special circumstances, such as being a place “to put up shelters when major natural disasters occur”.