Home » World » end of the closure in Wuhan, a crowd of passengers at the station

end of the closure in Wuhan, a crowd of passengers at the station

Hundreds of passengers were preparing to leave Wuhan by train, AFP noted on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, when the authorities lifted the closure imposed for two months on the Chinese city cradle of the epidemic of Covid- 19.

This is an important event, synonymous with the start of the end of the health crisis in China. Since January 23, people present in this municipality of 11 million inhabitants of the center of the country could not leave the borders of the commune.

At 00:00 local time (16:00 GMT Tuesday), the authorities lifted the last restrictions which prevented from leaving Wuhan.

At one of the city’s train stations, some excitement was noticeable as hundreds of passengers waited for their train, an AFP team noted.

I’ve been locked up for 77 days!“, rejoiced a man who did not wish to give his name, impatient to be able to return to Changsha, some 350 kilometers away.


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Agents reminded travelers of hygienic measures and to stay one meter apart, while a loudspeaker ad called Wuhan “hero city“.

The day before and for the first time since the start of the epidemic, the Chinese Ministry of Health had reported zero new deaths linked to Covid-19 in the country.

Wuhan remains, however, by far, the city most mourning for the epidemic in China: more than 2,500 people died there, out of a national total of more than 3,330.

The new coronavirus appeared in the municipality at the end of 2019. Many cases were originally reported on a market selling fish and seafood, but also exotic wild animals.

Travel restrictions had already been lifted in recent days in Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province.

The number of flights and trains departing from Wuhan remains limited, however. Wuhan will also maintain various restrictions on movement in the city to prevent any resurgence of infections.

Because the town hall remains on the alert: it has withdrawn this week from 70 previously classified residential areas “without epidemic“this designation which allows the inhabitants to leave their accommodation.

The municipality justified this decision by the discovery of asymptomatic people – who do not have a cough or fever but can still transmit the virus.

China reported its first death on January 11. Since then, nearly 82,000 people have been infected in the country, including 3,331 fatally.

The decline in recent weeks in cases of contamination and death in the country is however accompanied by doubts about the reliability of official figures published by the government.

Families notably reported in the Chinese press that people who died at home or who were not tested at the start of the epidemic, when hospitals were overcrowded, were not counted.

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