Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, takes part in a deliberation with his fellow deputies from the delegation of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region at the third session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing, capital of China, May 22, 2020. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)
BEIJING, May 23 (Xinhua) — “What is people first?” Chinese President Xi Jinping asked, before offering his own answer when he was talking with lawmakers at the ongoing national legislative session.
“So many people worked together to save a single patient. This, in essence, embodies doing whatever it takes (to save lives),” he said.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, is a deputy to the 13th National People’s Congress.
During his deliberations with fellow deputies from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Friday, “people” was a keyword.
Xi referred to a story told by another deputy that morning. Luo Jie, from the COVID-19 hard-hit province of Hubei, told reporters at the session how medical workers in his hospital spent 47 days saving an 87-year-old COVID-19 patient.
“About 10 medical workers meticulously took care of the patient for dozens of days, and finally saved the patient’s life,” Xi said. “I am really impressed.”
In the COVID-19 pandemic, health workers around the world got to know the elderly are the most difficult to treat and require the most sophisticated medical resources. China has given every patient equal treatment irrespective of their age or wealth.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, takes part in a deliberation with his fellow deputies from the delegation of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region at the third session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing, capital of China, May 22, 2020. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)
In Hubei alone, more than 3,600 COVID-19 patients over the age of 80 have been cured. In the provincial capital Wuhan, seven centenarian patients have been cured.
“We mobilized from around the nation the best doctors, the most advanced equipment and the most needed resources to Hubei and Wuhan, going all out to save lives,” Xi said during the deliberations, adding that the eldest patient cured is 108 years old.
“We are willing to save lives at all costs. No matter how old the patients are and how serious their conditions have become, we never give up,” Xi said.
Xi joined political advisors and lawmakers on Thursday and Friday in paying silent tribute to the lives lost to COVID-19 as the top political advisory body and the national legislature opened their annual sessions.
This year’s government work report said China’s economy posted negative growth in the first quarter of this year, but it was “a price worth paying” to contain COVID-19 as life is invaluable.
“As a developing country with 1.4 billion people, it is only by overcoming enormous difficulties that China has been able to contain COVID-19 in such a short time while also ensuring our people’s basic needs,” the report said.
Epidemic response is a reflection of China’s governing philosophy.
The fundamental goal for the Party to unite and lead the people in revolution, development and reform is “to ensure a better life for them,” Xi said.
The nation’s average life expectancy reached 77 years in 2018, more than double that in 1949, when the people’s republic was founded.
Chinese people are not just living longer but better lives, with more material wealth and broader choices to pursue individual dreams. All rural poor will bid farewell to poverty this year as part of the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.
The Party’s long-term governance, Xi said, rests on “always maintaining close bond with the people.”
“We must always remain true to the people’s aspiration and work in concert with them through thick and thin,” Xi said.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Testing everyone in 10 days would be a huge challenge
China is drawing up ambitious plans to test the entire population of Wuhan, the city where the Covid-19 pandemic began.
The announcement came after the emergence of six new coronavirus cases in the city – the first ones since early April.
The authorities had originally promised to test all 11 million people in 10 days.
But it now appears they might be aiming for a less ambitious timetable.
How long will the testing take?
In late April, the Hubei provincial government reported 63,000 people were being tested in Wuhan every day.
And by 10 May, that figure had dropped to just under 40,000.
There are more than 60 testing centres across the city, according to the official Hubei Daily newspaper.
These have a maximum capacity of 100,000 tests a day at most, making it hard to see how a target of testing the entire population in just 10 days could be met.
So the authorities have indicated the tests will not all start and finish within the same 10-day period.
“Some districts [in the city] will start from 12 May, others from 17 May, for example,” the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control said.
“Each district finishes its tests within 10 days from the date it started.”
The authorities say they have now tested more than three million people in the city.
Wuhan University pathogen biology department deputy director Yang Zhanqiu told the Global Times newspaper he believed up to five million Wuhan residents may have already been tested.
The population of the city – originally 11 million – has also fluctuated over time.
The authorities said up to five million people had left the city for the lunar New Year holiday before it was locked down on 23 January.
The lockdown then lasted until 8 April, but it is unclear how many of these residents have now returned.
Should everyone be tested?
Wuhan University’s Yang Zhanqiu said there was no need to test everyone living in neighbourhoods with no reported cases.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption There are worries about asymptomatic coronavirus cases
The authorities have said they will begin with people considered most at risk – for example in the older, more densely populated areas, as well as those in key jobs such as healthcare.
Also, people who have been tested in the previous seven days will not need to be tested again.
But Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou told state TV: “The virus could take longer to manifest itself in patients with weak immunity and these people are also prone to ‘on’ and ‘off’ symptoms.”
Yang Zhanqiu adds: “You’ll never know if people were infected after testing negative.”
And US-based Council for Foreign Affairs senior fellow for global health Yanzhong Huang said: “There would still be the possibility of isolated outbreaks in the future, which even large-scale testing will not address.”
People work at a construction site of a utility tunnel in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, April 30, 2020. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)
BEIJING, May 1 (Xinhua) — China is getting the world’s largest workforce back to work as the nationwide battle against COVID-19 has secured major strategic achievements.
The unprecedented fight has nurtured new trends in the workplace. For example, more attention is being paid to public health and e-commerce to boost consumption and emerging sectors brought by new applications based on the country’s rapid new infrastructure development of 5G networks and data centers.
In this aerial photo taken on April 29, 2020, representatives of frontline health workers fighting COVID-19 attend a bell-ringing ceremony at the Yellow Crane Tower, or Huanghelou, a landmark in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)
ANGELS OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Ye Man, head nurse of gastrointestinal department of Hubei General Hospital East District, one of the five remaining COVID-19 designated hospitals in Wuhan, is taking her first weeklong vacation since January.
The 34-year-old mother of two started to take a week off on Monday, one day after her hospital cleared all remaining confirmed COVID-19 patients. The nine ICU wards in her hospital had been kept occupied over the past several months.
Friday marked International Workers’ Day, and the start of China’s five-day public holiday. Ye said she planned to visit urban parks with her family during the holiday.
At her busiest point, she and her colleagues took care of a ward filled with 40 COVID-19 patients.
“It was a really tough time,” she recalled. She had to wear a protective gown and a mask for nine hours a day and be separated from her family to avoid possible cross-infections.
Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province and once hard hit by COVID-19, cleared all confirmed cases in hospitals on April 26. Over 42,000 medical workers mobilized nationwide to aid Hubei have contributed to achieving a decisive outcome in the fight to defend Hubei and Wuhan.
In an inspection tour to Wuhan on March 10, President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, lauded medical workers as “the most beautiful angels” and “messengers of light and hope.”
To reward brave and dedicated medics, major tourist sites in Hubei are offering free entry to medical staff over the following two years.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, learns about development of the black fungus industry in Jinmi Village of Xiaoling Township in Zhashui County, Shangluo City, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, April 20, 2020. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)
LIVESTREAMING ANCHORS
“We have a new batch of supplies today. Those who did not get the goods should hurry to buy now,” said Li Xuying, a livestreaming anchorwoman selling agaric mushrooms in Zhashui, a small county deep in the Qinling Mountains in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province.
Li has been prepared for a boom of online shopping in the holiday, because online buyers rushed to her livestreaming website to place orders, after Xi inspected the county and chatted with her in the village of Jinmi during a recent tour to Shaanxi.
“I used to sell goods worth about 50,000 yuan (7,070 U.S. dollars) on average after a six-hour livestreaming session. Now the sales are 10 times that,” she said.
Li was one of the 10 sales staff sent by the local agricultural e-commerce firm to Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao’s headquarters for livestreaming training. She said livestreaming is effective in bridging buyers and farmers, through which viewers can watch planting and harvesting online.
With the number of netizens in China reaching 904 million in March, e-commerce has been one of the popular means of promoting the sale of farm produce and helping farmers shake off poverty. Despite the impact of COVID-19, the country is determined to eradicate absolute poverty by the end of this year.
Workers work at the construction site of a 5G base station at Chongqing Hi-tech Zone in Chongqing, southwest China, April 15, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Quanchao)
HI-TECH WORKERS IN “NEW INFRASTRUCTURE” BUILDING
As an elasticity calculation engineer of Alibaba Cloud, Zhao Kun and his colleagues always stay on alert for high data flow, for example, brought by the anticipated online shopping spike during the holiday.
“The profession, which may sound obscure, is actually closely connected to everyone’s life, as cloud computing is the infrastructure supporting high-tech applications of artificial intelligence and blockchain,” said Zhao.
The Chinese leadership has underscored expediting “new infrastructure” development to boost industrial and consumption upgrading and catalyze new growth drivers.
Seizing the opportunities of industrial digitization and digital industrialization, China needs to expedite the construction of “new infrastructure” projects such as 5G networks and data centers, and deploy strategic emerging sectors and industries of the future including the digital economy, life health services and new materials, President Xi has said.
During the epidemic, Zhao and his colleagues expanded more than 100,000 cloud servers to ensure the stable operation of “cloud classrooms” and “cloud offices” for millions of people working and studying from home.
In the “new infrastructure” building, people like Zhao contribute to constructing the virtual infrastructure of an ecosystem, which enables e-commerce, e-payment, online teaching and the digital transformation of manufacturing and supply chain management.
In early April, China released a plan on promoting the transformation of enterprises toward digitalization and intelligence by further expanding the application of cloud and data technologies, to nurture new business models of the digital economy.
Zeng Zhenguo (L), a member of the medical assistance team supporting the virus-hit Wuhan in Hubei Province, hugs his wife after 14-day quarantine at the Xianghu area of the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University in Nanchang, east China’s Jiangxi Province, April 15, 2020. The 141 members of the medical assistance team reunited with their families on Wednesday after 14-day quarantine. (Xinhua/Wan Xiang)
Residents of nine regions, including Wuhan, Beijing and Shanghai, to be sampled using both nucleic acid and antibody tests, state media reports
Research ‘very important as it will help us to direct our countermeasures in the future’, molecular virologist says
China is using dual testing to determine how many people have been infected with Covid-19 but recovered without showing symptoms. Photo: AP
China has begun a major survey to determine how many people might have been infected with the coronavirus and then recovered without ever showing symptoms, while also assessing immunity levels within different communities, state media reported.
The research will be conducted in six provinces, including Hubei which was the focus of the initial outbreak, as well as Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing.
, the capital of Hubei and home to about 60 per cent of all infections reported in mainland China, is taking the lead in the study, which involves giving both nucleic acid and antibody tests to 11,000 of its 11 million residents, state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
Health workers collected throat swabs and blood samples from about 900 people randomly selected from eight subdistricts of the city on Tuesday, Ding Gangqiang, head of the Wuhan epidemiological survey team, was quoted as saying.
“The purpose is to learn about the immunity level in communities and provide scientific support on how we should adjust our disease control strategies,” he said.
Professor Lu Hongzhou, a specialist in infectious diseases who heads the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre where Covid-19 patients are being treated, said he supported the research though the collection of samples had yet to start in the city.
“We haven’t received notification from the top [to start],” he said. “The number of infections [in Shanghai] is not very big, but I think we’d better do this so as to have an idea of the scale of asymptomatic carriers.”
Professor Jin Dong-yan, a molecular virologist at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said that the use of both nucleic acid and antibody tests would enable scientists to determine those people who had been infected but recovered without medical aid and without showing symptoms.
The study into asymptomatic infections got under way in Wuhan in Tuesday. Photo: Simon Song
If a person tested positive in a nucleic acid test, it meant they were carrying the virus, and if positive in an antibodies test, it meant that they had contracted the virus and had recovered, he told the South China Morning Post.
“This is very important as it will help us to direct our countermeasures in the future,” Jin said.
“If we find, say 60 per cent, of the population has acquired immunity, then lockdowns will no longer be meaningful. If it turns out that there are many people with a high viral load but without symptoms, then we should be on high alert and take stricter measures.
“For people in Hubei, the tests can also save them from discrimination when they get back to work – those who prove to have developed immunity are very unlikely to get infected [again] for at least a year,” he said.
Wuhan hotel owners say they’re on the brink of going bust
to the nation’s daily infections tally at the start of April amid concerns that such people could trigger a second outbreak once the widespread lockdowns in cities like Wuhan and elsewhere were lifted.
China reported 103 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday, of which 39 were imported. Of the total, 57 people had no symptoms, including three of the imported cases.
Since the outbreak began, China has reported 82,295 cases, of which 95 per cent have recovered and been discharged from hospital.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China reported on Saturday a rise in new coronavirus cases, as authorities try to head off a second wave of infections, particularly from imported and asymptomatic cases, as curbs on cities and travel are lifted.
The National Health Commission said 46 new cases were reported on Friday, including 42 involving travellers from abroad, up from 42 cases a day earlier.
In its statement the commission added that 34 new asymptomatic cases were reported, down from 47 the previous day.
Mainland China’s tally of infections now stands at 81,953. The death toll rose by three to 3,339.
Tough curbs imposed since January helped rein in infections sharply from the height of the pandemic in February. But policymakers fear a second wave triggered by arrivals from overseas or asymptomatic patients.
Northeastern Heilongjiang recently reported a spike in new cases because of Chinese nationals entering the province from Russia, which has seen a surge of cases.
Provincial health officials said it had 22 new imported cases on Friday, all Chinese nationals coming from Russia, and one new local case, in its capital of Harbin.
Inner Mongolia had a daily tally of 27 new imported cases by Saturday morning, all from Russia, the region’s health authority said.
The central province of Hubei, where the virus emerged late last year, reported no new cases for a seventh successive day.
A rise in virus infections has prompted authorities in Guangzhou to step up scrutiny of foreigners, ordering bars and restaurants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin, the U.S. consulate in the southern city said.
Anyone with “African contacts” faces mandatory virus tests followed by quarantine, regardless of recent travel history or previous isolation, it said in a statement.
It advised African-Americans or those who feel they might be suspected of contact with nationals of African origin to avoid the city.
Since the epidemic broke out in the provincial capital of Wuhan, it has spread around the world, infecting 1.6 million people and killing more than 100,000.
BEIJING (Reuters) – Mainland China reported no coronavirus deaths for the first time since the pandemic began, and a drop in new cases, a day before the central city of Wuhan, where the virus emerged late in December, is set to lift its lockdown.
China had 32 new infections by Monday, down from 39 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said.
For the first time since the commission began publishing nationwide data in late January, Hubei’s provincial capital of Wuhan saw no new deaths, joining the rest of mainland China, which has recorded none since March 31.
Wuhan, a city of 11 million that reported only two new infections in the past fortnight is due to allow residents to leave the city on Wednesday, for the first time since it was locked down on Jan. 23 to curb the spread of the virus.
With mainland China well past February’s peak of infections, authorities have turned their attention to imported cases and asymptomatic patients, who show no symptoms but can still pass on the virus.
Total infections in mainland China stood at 81,740 on Monday with 3,331 deaths, the commission said. It reported 30 new asymptomatic cases, nine involving incoming travellers. Of the new asymptomatic cases, 18 were in Hubei.
By the end of Monday, 1,033 asymptomatic patients were under medical observation.
TIGHTER LAND BORDERS
Overseas arrivals made up all 32 of the new cases with symptoms, down from 38 a day earlier. Total imported infections stand at 983, the commission said.
China faces the “dual risks” of imported infections and domestic cluster outbreaks, a commission spokesman told a briefing on Tuesday.
The northeast province of Heilongjiang reported 20 new cases, all in Chinese citizens returning from neighbouring Russia. It had reported 20 new infections on Sunday, all also cases imported from Russia.
On Tuesday, the Chinese consulate in the Russian city of Vladivostok near the border with China said it strongly reminded Chinese nationals not to return home through the border port of Suifenhe, which is to be closed to all arrivals from Tuesday.
China has shut its borders to foreigners as the virus spread globally, though most imported cases have involved Chinese nationals returning from overseas.
The number of inbound travellers through airports is fewer than 3,000 a day, down from about 25,000 in late March, before China slashed the number of international flights.
It also started testing all international arrivals for the virus this month.
BEIJING (Reuters) – Mainland China reported no coronavirus deaths for the first time since the pandemic began, and a drop in new cases, a day before the central city of Wuhan, where the virus emerged late in December, is set to lift its lockdown.
China had 32 new infections by Monday, down from 39 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said.
For the first time since the commission began publishing nationwide data in late January, Hubei’s provincial capital of Wuhan saw no new deaths, joining the rest of mainland China, which has recorded none since March 31.
Wuhan, a city of 11 million that reported only two new infections in the past fortnight is due to allow residents to leave the city on Wednesday, for the first time since it was locked down on Jan. 23 to curb the spread of the virus.
With mainland China well past February’s peak of infections, authorities have turned their attention to imported cases and asymptomatic patients, who show no symptoms but can still pass on the virus.
Total infections in mainland China stood at 81,740 on Monday with 3,331 deaths, the commission said. It reported 30 new asymptomatic cases, nine involving incoming travellers. Of the new asymptomatic cases, 18 were in Hubei.
By the end of Monday, 1,033 asymptomatic patients were under medical observation.
TIGHTER LAND BORDERS
Overseas arrivals made up all 32 of the new cases with symptoms, down from 38 a day earlier. Total imported infections stand at 983, the commission said.
China faces the “dual risks” of imported infections and domestic cluster outbreaks, a commission spokesman told a briefing on Tuesday.
The northeast province of Heilongjiang reported 20 new cases, all in Chinese citizens returning from neighbouring Russia. It had reported 20 new infections on Sunday, all also cases imported from Russia.
On Tuesday, the Chinese consulate in the Russian city of Vladivostok near the border with China said it strongly reminded Chinese nationals not to return home through the border port of Suifenhe, which is to be closed to all arrivals from Tuesday.
China has shut its borders to foreigners as the virus spread globally, though most imported cases have involved Chinese nationals returning from overseas.
The number of inbound travellers through airports is fewer than 3,000 a day, down from about 25,000 in late March, before China slashed the number of international flights.
It also started testing all international arrivals for the virus this month.
BEIJING/WUHAN, China (Reuters) – China on Saturday mourned the thousands of “martyrs” who have died in the new coronavirus outbreak, flying the national flag at half mast throughout the country and suspending all forms of entertainment.
The Chinese national flag flies at half-mast at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, as China holds a national mourning for those who died of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), on the Qingming tomb sweeping festival, April 4, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
The day of mourning coincided with the start of the annual Qingming tomb-sweeping festival, when millions of Chinese families pay respects to their ancestors.
At 10 a.m. (0200 GMT) Beijing time, the country observed three minutes of silence to mourn those who died, including frontline medical workers and doctors. Cars, trains and ships sounded their horns and air raid sirens wailed.
In Zhongnanhai, the seat of political power in Beijing, President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders paid silent tribute in front of the national flag, with white flowers pinned to their chest as a mark of mourning, state media reported.
More than 3,300 people in mainland China have died in the epidemic, which first surfaced in the central province of Hubei late last year, according to statistics published by the National Health Commission.
In Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and the epicentre of the outbreak, all traffic lights in urban areas turned red at 10 a.m. and all road traffic ceased for three minutes.
Some 2,567 people have died in Wuhan, a megacity of 11 million people located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze river. The Wuhan deaths account for more than 75% of the country’s fatalities.
Among those who died was Li Wenliang, a young doctor who tried to raise the alarm about the disease. Li was honoured by the Hubei government earlier this week, after initially being reprimanded by police in Wuhan for “spreading rumours”.
Gui Yihong, 27, who was among thousands of Wuhan locals who volunteered to deliver food supplies to hospitals during the city’s months-long lockdown, recalled the fear, frustration and pain at Wuhan Central Hospital, where Li worked.
“If you weren’t at the frontlines you wouldn’t be able to experience this,” said Gui, as he laid some flowers next to Wuhan’s 1954 flood memorial by the Yangtze.
“I had to (come) and bear witness. For the last 80 days we had fought between life and death, and finally gained victory. It was not easy at all to come by.”
While the worst was behind Wuhan, the virus has spread to all corners of the globe since January, sickening more than a million people, killing more than 55,000 and paralysing the world economy.
Wuhan banned all tomb-sweeping activities in its cemeteries until at least April 30, curtailing one of the most important dates in the traditional Chinese lunar new year calendar which usually sees millions of families travel to tend to their ancestral graves, offer flowers and burn incense.
They have also told residents, most stuck at home due to lockdown restrictions, to use online streaming services to watch cemetery staff carry out those tasks live.
ASYMPTOMATIC CASES
Online, celebrities including “X-Men: Days of Future Past” star Fan Bingbing swapped their glamorous social media profile pictures for sombre photos in grey or black, garnering millions of “likes” from fans.
Chinese gaming and social media giant Tencent (0700.HK) suspended all online games on Saturday.
As of Friday, the total number of confirmed cases across the country stood at 81,639, including 19 new infections, the National Health Commission said.
Eighteen of the new cases involved travellers arriving from abroad. The remaining one new infection was a local case in Wuhan, a patient who was previously asymptomatic.
Asymptomatic people exhibit few signs of infection such as fevers or coughs, and are not included in the tally of confirmed cases by Chinese authorities until they do.
However, they are still infectious, and the government has warned of possible local transmissions if such asymptomatic cases are not properly monitored.
China reported 64 new asymptomatic cases as of Friday, including 26 travellers arriving in the country from overseas. That takes the total number of asymptomatic people currently under medical observation to 1,030, including 729 in Hubei.
People enjoy sunset on a plank road at the East Lake in Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province, March 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan)
Arduous efforts have been made since Wuhan was locked down and the efforts have paid off, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 gradually brought under control in this once hardest-hit Chinese city. With sacrifices and persistence, a bright dawn is finally around the corner.
WUHAN, March 24 (Xinhua) — Xia Yongli starts a workday at dawn by having his temperature taken, disinfecting his bus and going through safety checks before hitting the road at 7:00 a.m. sharp.
Over the past eight weeks, the bus driver in the central Chinese city of Wuhan had not driven his familiar route, which is 14 km long and usually takes 40 minutes. Instead, he has been shuttling medics and delivering supplies to shops and supermarkets.
The city, with a population of over 10 million, pressed a “pause” button on Jan. 23 to contain the spread of the rampaging coronavirus behind the COVID-19 epidemic, with all public transport and outbound channels shut down and all residents staying indoors.
The streets of Wuhan are no longer bustling. Shopping blocks, pedestrian streets and other popular places where local people would stroll around are largely left to still figure sculptures.
Arduous efforts have been made since Wuhan was locked down and the efforts have paid off, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 gradually brought under control. Once hardest-hit, Wuhan only had one newly confirmed COVID-19 case reported for six consecutive days between March 18 and 23.
Wuhan had reported a total of 50,006 confirmed cases by March 23, and 43,214 patients had been cured and discharged from hospitals.
With sacrifices and persistence, a bright dawn is finally around the corner. People will be allowed to leave the city and the province from April 8, local authorities said Tuesday.
A staff member conducts disinfection at a subway station in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, March 23, 2020. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan)
To reduce the risk of imported cases, all personnel coming to Wuhan from overseas have to be brought under closed-loop management, with timely quarantine and epidemiological surveys conducted, said Ying Yong, secretary of Hubei Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.
“Wuhan had pressed the pause button and is currently in urgent need of restoring its urban functions with safe and ordered operations,” Ying said.
More than 110 bus routes citywide have conducted no-load test runs. Disinfection has been carried out at local metro and railway stations. Checkpoints for epidemic control, 27 on cross-river bridges and nearly 80 others in main urban areas, have been removed.
Infrared thermometers have been installed at subway entrances, with posters of QR codes for real-name registration inside the stations and carriages.
Staff members conduct disinfection on a subway train in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, March 23, 2020. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)
“The traffic on the road is coming back,” said Hu Lijun, general manager of the Wuhan Zhengyuan Gaoli Optical Co., Ltd., a photoelectric encoder manufacturer, whose production capacity has been restored by 80 percent.
Traffic flow at highway exits is also increasing by about 10 percent per day due to a growing number of people returned as Wuhan speeds up resumption of work and production.
There were health staff, community workers and police in each lane at toll-gate checkpoints, scanning health codes and taking body temperatures of the returning workers, disinfecting their vehicles and making registrations.
“Drivers had to queue up at the highway exits in the past to spend five minutes filling a registration form,” said Dong Hongxiang, a police officer, noting that registration time has been cut short now by using PDA scanners.
On March 21, a special train arrived in Wuhan with 1,013 passengers on board, all of whom were employees of Dongfeng Honda, a local joint venture. They were picked up at the train station and sent directly to the factory or their residences.
Workers are busy on the production lines at the workshop of Dongfeng Passenger Vehicle Company in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, March 24, 2020. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)
Wuhan-based enterprises that are important to the national and global industry chains and those closely related to people’s livelihood are allowed to continue operation or resume work, said Cao Guangjing, deputy governor of Hubei.
Hubei serves as one of China’s major auto producers and phosphate fertilizers. Cao said that relevant companies play significant role in the production chains. Their resumption of operation counts.
Preferential measures have been taken to support restart of engine in the city. The State Grid Wuhan electric power company has rolled out new policies to cut or exempt electricity bills for local enterprises, an estimated reduction of 389 million yuan (about 55 million U.S. dollars) by the end of June.
People have also started to venture out, although they cannot go as far or wherever they want.
Wang Tan, a Wuhan resident, stepped out of his home for the first time in two months to get some medicine for his father-in-law at a nearby pharmacy Monday morning.
With a health code on WeChat, Wang said he could visit convenience stores, green groceries and drug stores close to his home and have some free time outdoors inside his residential community, which has been clear of COVID-19 cases for 14 days in a row.
The Guoxinyuan community in Jiang’an District has been epidemic-free for 26 consecutive days. There were kids skipping ropes and the gray-haired doing exercises in open public areas. People observed social distancing while reclaiming a long-lost conversation.
“The public space in our community is quite small, thus no more than 80 people are allowed to have outdoor activities at one time,” said Wei Jilai, who heads the neighborhood committee.
A woman purchases daily necessities at a convenience store in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, March 19, 2020. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan)
As the epidemic recedes, more than 21,000 medical staff from across the country who had fought on the frontline in Wuhan and other places in Hubei are returning home. Before departure, some visited East Lake, one of the well-known tourist attractions in Wuhan, having group photos before cherry trees in blossom to mark the unforgettable days in the city.
Some are leaving, while others stand their ground. Ma Xin, vice president of the Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University in Shanghai, stayed at Wuhan’s Tongji Hospital with his team, treating severe and critically ill patients.
“Most of them have underlying diseases and have to be treated for their complications,” Ma said, stressing that vigilance is still needed at present, especially against imported cases and relapse.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 