The Chinese city of Wuhan emerged from its 76-day lockdown Wednesday, with 11 million residents able to move around the city and the country — provided their government-issued “health code” shines green.
Wuhan staged a grand light show under the theme “Heroic City, Heroic People” to celebrate the reopening of the central Chinese metropolis where the virus emerged late last year. But the trauma and isolation of the past two months have taken a huge toll: More than 2,500 Wuhan residents died of the coronavirus and tens of thousands were hospitalized, according to official figures. Now, people must piece their lives and livelihoods back together.
“Even though the epidemic might be ending, for some groups of people the trauma might be just starting,” Du Mingjun, who set up a 24-hour mental health hotline, told a Reuters reporter in Wuhan.
Authorities had been cautious about allowing Wuhan to come out of its quarantine, gradually allowing various parts of the city to return to a semblance of normal over the past week or so. The final barrier came up at midnight on Wednesday, when people were allowed to leave Wuhan for the first time since Jan. 23. Cars and trucks were lined up for hours at the city’s 76 tollgates. A Phoenix TV reporter posted a video of vehicles streaming out.
“I’m very excited,” Li Qing, a Wuhan native waiting at a toll gate so she could return to her work in Jiangsu province, told the Sixth Tone website. “The city can’t stay sealed off forever — we need to go to work.”
More than 55,000 people were estimated to be leaving Wuhan by train on Wednesday, with 40 percent going to the southern manufacturing hub of Guangdong. The first flight to leave Wuhan’s Tianhe International Airport since the city lifted the lockdown was a China Eastern plane bound for Sanya, on the resort island of Hainan.
Most of those leaving appeared to be migrant workers trying to return to jobs elsewhere in China. The lockdown began on the eve of the Lunar New Year holiday, often the only time of year that people can visit their hometowns and families.
But the Communist Party secretary for Hubei province, Ying Yong, said that Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, wasn’t out of the woods. “Zero new infection doesn’t mean zero risk in the epidemic,” Ying said Tuesday. “The lifting of traffic lockdown doesn’t mean a lifting of epidemic control measures; the reopening of city gate doesn’t mean that we should open the doors to our homes.”
The Hubei government has urged residents not to go outside unless necessary, and if they do go out, to wear masks.
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent a second night in intensive care and was in a stable condition on Wednesday after receiving oxygen support for COVID-19 complications, raising questions about how key decisions would be taken in his absence.
General view of 10 Downing Street as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, London, Britain, April 8, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
Johnson, who tested positive nearly two weeks ago, was admitted to St Thomas’ hospital on Sunday evening with a persistent high temperature and cough but his condition deteriorated and he was rushed into an intensive care unit.
The 55-year-old British leader has received oxygen support but was not put on a ventilator and his designated deputy, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, said he would soon be back at the helm as the world faces one of its gravest public health crisis in a century.
“He is comfortable, he’s stable, he’s in good spirits,” Edward Argar, a junior health minister, said on Wednesday. “While he’s had oxygen, he hasn’t been on a ventilator.
As Johnson battled the novel coronavirus in hospital, the United Kingdom was entering what scientists said was the deadliest phase of the outbreak and grappling with the question of when to lift the lockdown.
Inside the government, ministers were debating how long the world’s fifth-largest economy could afford to be shut down, and the long-term implications of one of the most stringent set of emergency controls in peacetime history.
The United Kingdom’s total hospital deaths from COVID-19 rose by a record 786 to 6,159 as of 1600 GMT on April 6, the latest publicly available death toll, though just 213,181 people out of the population of around 68 million have been tested.
Britain was in no position to lift the shutdown as the peak of the outbreak was still over a week away, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said.
“We are nowhere near lifting the lockdown,” Khan said.
ACTING PM RAAB?
Johnson was breathing without any assistance and had not required respiratory support, said Raab, who said the prime minister, whom he described as “a fighter”, remained in charge.
There are few precedents in British history of a prime minister being incapacitated at a time of major crisis, though Winston Churchill suffered a stroke while in office in 1953 and Tony Blair twice underwent heart treatment in the 2000s.
Johnson has delegated some authority to Raab, who was appointed foreign minister less than a year ago, though any major decisions - such as when to lift the lockdown - would in effect need the blessing of Johnson’s cabinet.
Britain’s uncodified constitution - an unwieldy collection of sometimes ancient and contradictory precedents - offers no clear, formal “Plan B”. In essence, it is the prime minister’s call and, if he is incapacitated, then up to cabinet to decide.
Raab said ministers had “very clear directions, very clear instructions” from Johnson but it was not clear what would happen if crucial decisions needed to be made which strayed from the approved plan.
Michael Heseltine, who served as deputy prime minister to John Major in the 1990s, told the Telegraph Raab’s position needed to be clarified.
Former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind said most major decisions over the coronavirus strategy had been taken with the important exception of whether or not to ease the lockdown, a call that will need to be made in the next week or soon after.
“That is not just a medical judgement. It has to be a balance between the medical considerations and the consequences of leaving the whole economy shut down,” Rifkind told BBC TV.
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While such a decision would be made by cabinet even if Johnson were not unwell, he said Britain’s prime minister had authority and sway as the “primus inter pares” - Latin for “first among equals”.
“He very often can steer the direction in a particular way. Dominic Raab doesn’t have the authority nor would he claim it,” Rifkind said.
Reporting by Sarah Young, Kylie MacLellan and David Milliken; editing by Michael Holden and Nick Macfie
The Chinese city of Wuhan emerged from its 76-day lockdown Wednesday, with 11 million residents able to move around the city and the country — provided their government-issued “health code” shines green.
Wuhan staged a grand light show under the theme “Heroic City, Heroic People” to celebrate the reopening of the central Chinese metropolis where the virus emerged late last year. But the trauma and isolation of the past two months have taken a huge toll: More than 2,500 Wuhan residents died of the coronavirus and tens of thousands were hospitalized, according to official figures. Now, people must piece their lives and livelihoods back together.
“Even though the epidemic might be ending, for some groups of people the trauma might be just starting,” Du Mingjun, who set up a 24-hour mental health hotline, told a Reuters reporter in Wuhan.
Authorities had been cautious about allowing Wuhan to come out of its quarantine, gradually allowing various parts of the city to return to a semblance of normal over the past week or so. The final barrier came up at midnight on Wednesday, when people were allowed to leave Wuhan for the first time since Jan. 23. Cars and trucks were lined up for hours at the city’s 76 tollgates. A Phoenix TV reporter posted a video of vehicles streaming out.
“I’m very excited,” Li Qing, a Wuhan native waiting at a toll gate so she could return to her work in Jiangsu province, told the Sixth Tone website. “The city can’t stay sealed off forever — we need to go to work.”
More than 55,000 people were estimated to be leaving Wuhan by train on Wednesday, with 40 percent going to the southern manufacturing hub of Guangdong. The first flight to leave Wuhan’s Tianhe International Airport since the city lifted the lockdown was a China Eastern plane bound for Sanya, on the resort island of Hainan.
Most of those leaving appeared to be migrant workers trying to return to jobs elsewhere in China. The lockdown began on the eve of the Lunar New Year holiday, often the only time of year that people can visit their hometowns and families.
But the Communist Party secretary for Hubei province, Ying Yong, said that Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, wasn’t out of the woods. “Zero new infection doesn’t mean zero risk in the epidemic,” Ying said Tuesday. “The lifting of traffic lockdown doesn’t mean a lifting of epidemic control measures; the reopening of city gate doesn’t mean that we should open the doors to our homes.”
The Hubei government has urged residents not to go outside unless necessary, and if they do go out, to wear masks.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks and takes questions during a press conference in Downing Street regarding the coronavirus outbreak, on March 9, 2020. in London, England.
Alberto Pezzali - WPA Pool | Getty Images
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has spent a second night in an intensive care unit in hospital, but his condition is stable, according to officials.
"The Prime Minister's condition is stable and he remains in intensive care for close monitoring. He is in good spirits," Downing Street said in a statement Tuesday evening.
Johnson was admitted to the unit in St. Thomas' Hospital, London, on Monday evening after his coronavirus symptoms worsened.
It was announced on March 27 that Johnson had tested positive for the coronavirus, but he wasn't admitted to hospital until Sunday for "tests" due to persistent symptoms of the virus, including a cough and fever.
Speaking at the government's daily press conference Tuesday, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is deputizing for Johnson, said the prime minister had been "receiving standard oxygen treatment and breathing without any assistance."
"He's not required any mechanical ventilation or noninvasive respiratory support. He remains in good spirits and in keeping with clinical practice his progress continues to be monitored closely in critical care," Raab said.
The U.K. reported its largest daily rise in deaths so far on Tuesday, with 786 fatalities reported, taking the overall death toll to 6,159 people. The sharp rise in deaths (up from 439 reported Monday) has been partly attributed to a lag in data collection from the weekend, Sky News reported. To date, 55,242 people in the U.K. have tested positive for the virus.
Officials said there are tentative signs that the spread of the virus is slowing. The government's Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance said Tuesday that it was "possible that we're beginning to see... the curve flattening." He said it would be another "week or so" before there could be any certainty of that, however.
Johnson was the first world leader to contract the coronavirus and his admission to intensive care has shocked many. On Tuesday, he was sent best wishes from leaders in Europe, and President Trump, who called him a "very good friend."
BEIJING (Reuters) - As the world grapples with the escalating coronavirus pandemic, China reopened the city of Wuhan on Wednesday, allowing its 11 million residents to leave for the first time in over two months, a milestone in its effort to combat the outbreak.
FILE PHOTO: A man wearing a face mask walks next to barriers set up to block buildings from a street in Wuhan, Hubei province, the epicentre of China's coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, March 29, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song
But while the operation to contain Wuhan’s coronavirus outbreak has been hailed as a success by China and many international health experts, it didn’t come easy.
Using virus case data, official reports and over a dozen interviews with officials, residents and scientists in Wuhan, Reuters has compiled a comprehensive account of how the military-style quarantine of the city unfolded.
SCIENTIST TOUR
Wuhan health authorities reported the first case of what turned out to be the new coronavirus in December, and the first known death linked to the virus in early January.
City officials insisted the situation was under control for the first two weeks of January, downplaying the possibility of human-to-human transmission as they focused on a seafood and wildlife market where the outbreak was believed to have started.
But troubling signs were emerging.
Hospital respiratory wards began reaching capacity by around Jan 12, and some people were being turned away, a half dozen Wuhan residents told Reuters.
But at least up to Jan. 16, Wuhan’s government said that no new cases of the disease had occurred for about two weeks, and the city continued as normal. Diners packed restaurants, shoppers flocked to commercial districts, and travellers headed to train stations and airports for their Lunar New Year holidays.
Minimal measures were put in place to take the temperatures of residents in public places, or encourage them to wear protective masks, residents said.
“We ordinary people did not know that we needed to take protective measures,” said Wang Wenjun, whose uncle died of the coronavirus on Jan 31.
But that changed after Jan 18, when a team of scientists sent by the central government in Beijing arrived in Wuhan.
Leading the group was 83-year-old Zhong Nanshan, an epidemiologist credited with raising the alarm in China about the spread of another coronavirus, SARS, in 2003. Over two days, the team investigated the source and scale of Wuhan’s outbreak, inspecting the seafood and wildlife market and other sites.
As the scientists toured Wuhan, their mood darkened as the scale of the crisis became clear, said a source familiar with the trip.
A day before the scientists arrived, four new cases were confirmed in Wuhan, none of which had apparent links to the market.
That cast doubt over local authorities’ previous assertions that there was no substantial evidence of human-to-human transmission, which would have required them to impose drastic containment measures on the city.
The scientists’ visit was the third by an expert group since the end of December as suspicion in Beijing grew that the virus was transmissible and local officials had concealed the challenges they faced containing the disease, according to an academic on the Jan 18 trip and a scientist who visited on Jan 2. Another trip took place on Jan 8.
During the Jan 18 visit, the team made several discoveries that had been previously undisclosed to the public by local officials.
Over a dozen healthcare workers had been infected, efforts to track close contacts with other confirmed cases had dwindled, and hospitals had not conducted a single test before Jan. 16, Zhong and other experts on the team announced a few days after their trip to Wuhan.
On Jan 19, the group of about a half dozen scientists returned to Beijing, where they reported their findings to the National Health Commission, which formulates China’s health policy.
The experts recommended that Wuhan be put under quarantine and that hospital capacity be rapidly expanded, according to two sources who were briefed on the discussions. Zhong himself had suggested the lockdown measures, they said. Zhong and the commission did not respond to requests for comment.
One of the sources said the proposal was initially rejected by Wuhan government officials because they feared the economic impact, but they were overruled by the central authorities.
On the evening of Jan 20, the central government set up a taskforce in Wuhan to spearhead the fight against the epidemic.
The lockdown of Wuhan had been put in motion.
Ye Qing, deputy chief of the statistics bureau in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, said it was only when Zhong announced his findings that he began to realize the seriousness of this epidemic.
Wuhan officials, he said, reacted far too late. “If the government had sent out a notice, if they had asked everyone to wear masks, to do temperature checks, maybe a lot fewer people would have died.”
He added: “It’s a painful lesson with blood and tears.”
Later tracing of virus patients showed that people confirmed to have the virus travelled from Wuhan to at least 25 provinces, municipalities and administrative regions across China before the lockdown plan went into action.
The Wuhan government and the National Health Commission in Beijing did not respond to requests for comment.
LOCKDOWN
The ripple effects of events in Beijing were soon felt in Wuhan.
On Jan 22, senior officials in Wuhan received a written government notice telling them not to leave the city, or report their whereabouts if they had, according to two local government sources.
The directive offered no further details, but at about 8 p.m. that night, some officials received notice by telephone that the city would be shut off the next morning, the sources said.
The lockdown was publicly announced at 2 a.m., sending thousands of Wuhan residents scrambling to find a way out.
But access into and out of the city was quickly closed off, with public transportation shut down and the use of private cars banned. Residents were soon after restricted to their homes.
Having seized control of the crisis, Beijing also removed a number of key officials from Wuhan and Hubei province.
Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, who kept his job, made a frank admission in an interview with state media a few days later that party-reporting mechanisms had stifled early action.
“Information should have been released more quickly,” he said. The process had been slowed by officials in Wuhan being “obliged to seek permission” before fully disclosing information to the public, he said.
‘NEW NORMAL’
Almost two months after the lockdown was imposed, China has started allowing residents to leave the city, as well as permitting domestic flights and inter-city trains. Wuhan has reported just one new case in the past week, and around 93% of all cases have recovered, according to official data.
As other countries consider Wuhan-style quarantines, those numbers have come under increased scrutiny, however. U.S. President Donald Trump said last week that China’s numbers were “on the light side,” drawing the ire of Beijing.
Slideshow (2 Images)
China has also only just begun reporting data on asymptomatic cases – those in which carriers can transmit the disease without feeling symptoms - in the past week. That followed a public backlash on social media in China that the key numbers had been omitted from the official tally, raising concerns that such cases could lead to a second wave of infections.
Xue Lan, a professor at Tsinghua University who is a member of a government coronavirus task force, said precautions put in place for the lockdown – like social distancing - would likely become a part of life in the future in China.
“From now on our social lives will enter a new normal,” Xue said.
Reporting by Cate Cadell and Yawen Chen; additional reporting was contributed by Keith Zhai in Singapore, David Kirton in Shenzhen, and Gabriel Crossley in Beijing. Editing by Philip McClellan
