WUHAN, China (AP) – A year ago, a notice sent to smartphones in Wuhan at 2 a.m. announced the world’s first 76-day coronavirus blockade.
Early Saturday morning, residents of the central Chinese city where the virus was first detected were jogging and practicing tai chi in a foggy park beside the mighty Yangtze River.
Life has returned to normal in the city of eleven million, even when the rest of the world faces the spread of the most contagious variants of the virus. Efforts to vaccinate people against COVID-19 have been thwarted by disarray and limited supply in some places. The scourge has killed more than 2 million people worldwide.
Traffic was light in Wuhan, but there was no sign of the barriers that a year ago isolated neighborhoods, impeded city traffic, and confined people to their residential buildings and even apartments.
Wuhan accounted for the bulk of China’s 4,635 deaths from COVID-19, a figure that has remained largely static for months. The city has been largely free of other outbreaks since the closure was withdrawn on April 8, but questions remain about the origin of the virus and whether Chinese and Wuhan authorities acted quickly and transparently enough. enough to allow the world to prepare for a pandemic that has sickened more than 98 million.
China announced 107 more cases on Saturday, for a total of 88,911. Of these, the northern province of Heilongjiang accounted for the largest number at 56. Beijing and Shanghai’s eastern financial center reported three new cases amid massive tests and closures of hospitals and housing units related to outbreaks. recent.
Authorities are wary of the new wave of next month’s lunar New Year holidays and are telling people not to travel and avoid meetings as much as possible. Schools drop out a week in advance and many have already moved on to online classes. The use of masks remains virtually universal in the interior and on public transportation. Mobile phone apps are used to track people’s movements and show that both have no viruses and have not been to areas where suspicious cases have been found.
Wuhan has been praised for his sacrifice in the service of the nation, making it a sort of Stalingrad in China’s war on the virus, commemorated in books, documentaries, television programs and flowery eulogies of officials, including the head of State and the leader of the Communists. Feast Xi Jinping.
China has stubbornly defended its actions in the early days of the outbreak, saying it helped gain time for the rest of the world, while pushing marginal theories that the virus was brought to the city from outside the world. China, possibly from a US laboratory.
After months of negotiations, China finally gave permission last week for the World Health Organization to send a team of international experts to begin investigating the origins of the virus. They are currently suffering from two weeks in quarantine.
A group of experts commissioned by the WHO this week criticized China and other countries for failing to curb the initial outbreak earlier, prompting Beijing to admit it could have gone better.
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, southern China, thousands of residents were locked up on Saturday in an unprecedented move to contain a worsening outbreak in the city.
Hong Kong has been struggling to contain a new wave of coronaviruses since November. In the last two months, more than 4,300 cases have been registered, representing almost 40% of the city’s total.
Authorities said in a statement that an area of 16 buildings in the working-class neighborhood of Yau Tsim Mong will be closed until all residents are tested.