Medical staff at a Wuhan hospital in January 2020 / AFP
WUHAN, China
“We are no longer afraid!” said the inhabitants of Wuhan yesterday, who recovered a completely normal life three years after the start of a strict and traumatizing confinement to fight Covid-19.
Wuhan, in central-eastern China, has suffered from the outbreak of an unknown virus since the end of 2019, causing pneumonia in a growing number of its inhabitants.
The virus put this industrial city of 11 million inhabitants at the center of global media interest.
The Wuhan authorities decided on January 23, 2020 to confine the city, a month and a half before the World Health Organization (WHO) considered the virus a global pandemic that caused millions of deaths worldwide.
Three years later, life returned to normal in most countries, including China, which announced in early December the end of most of its health restrictions.
There was virtually no sign yesterday of the ghost town that Wuhan became in January 2020.
Despite an icy wind, its inhabitants took advantage of the Chinese New Year holidays to go shopping in the markets or to walk along the banks of the Yangtze River.
Some older people were stretching, while other Wuhan citizens were kite-flying.
Many of them also visited the Guiyuan Temple, one of the best-known buildings in the city and open, for the first time in the last three years, for the Chinese New Year recess.
“NORMAL LIFE”
“The new year that is beginning will undoubtedly be the best. We are no longer afraid of the virus!” said Yan Dongju, a maintenance worker in his 60s.
A little further away, a young motorcycle delivery man for pre-cooked meals agreed with him.
“Everyone recovered a normal life. They stay with the family, with their friends, they go out to have fun or travel. They smile again,” Liang Feicheng explained.
“We are no longer worried and restless like then,” said this delivery man, wearing glasses and a mask to protect himself from the intense cold.
The confinement in January 2020, announced in the middle of the night and applied a few hours later, took the inhabitants of this Chinese metropolis by surprise.
Airports and train stations, as well as road connections, were closed.
Wuhan was cut off from the world for 76 days, with its inhabitants locked in their homes and hospitals overwhelmed by the arrival of the sick.
But the chaos of three years ago is now a thing of the past.
In front of a store where photographers took an image of a corpse of an alleged Covid victim lying on the sidewalk some time ago, they have now opened a school whose name seems to be a nod to overcoming that critical period: “Casa de la Hope”.
The Huanan Seafood Market, which was suspected to be the epicenter of the epidemic, closed in 2020.
Large blue barriers continue to protect that place, in front of which a patrol car is stationed.
THE CORONAVIRUS DID NOT DISAPPEAR
Despite the return to normality of the inhabitants of Wuhan, as well as in the rest of China, that does not mean that the coronavirus has disappeared from the Asian giant.
About 80 percent of the population in China contracted Covid-19 since the lifting of sanitary restrictions in early December, according to epidemiologist Wu Zunyu, a leader in the country in the fight against the virus.
China reported this weekend at least 13,000 new deaths “in relation to Covid-19” between January 13 and 19.
This figure, which only reflects those who died in hospitals, is in addition to the 60,000 deaths since December, previously announced by the authorities.
Undoubtedly, it is a partial balance in a country with 1.4 billion inhabitants, in which numerous hospitals and crematoriums were overwhelmed last month by those infected with the virus.
