Four months after the first cases of coronavirus were recorded and three months after total quarantine was declared in Wuhan, the Chinese authorities changed the status of the city from closed to open to the public. However, the metropolis, apparently, it will take more time for the city to return to normal life - consumer activity is at zero, and there will probably be no foreign investors for several more years.
In Wuhan, a Chinese metropolis with a population of 12 million people, where coronavirus cases were first recorded in December 2019, quarantine is officially canceled on Wednesday, April 8. Trains will start to run from the city and it will be possible to fly by plane, intercity automobile communication will be restored. But this will not mean a return to normal, Bloomberg reports.
Despite the fact that now the number of new infections per day does not exceed 30 compared to several thousand in February, the shock from the epidemic still persists, and the fear of the second wave does not allow businesses to resume work at “pre-virus” levels. Fears are fueled by the fact that cases of infection in people who do not have symptoms of the disease are still being detected in the city. It is such asymptomatic cases that played a huge role in the spread of the epidemic. “Silent carriers,” up to a third of those whose tests tested positive for coronavirus, wrote the South China Morning Post in late March, citing Chinese government data. At the same time, Chinese doctors claim that an asymptomatic patient can infect a maximum of one person.
"Before and after"
Wuhan is the center of one of the most important industrial regions of China, Hubei Province. Before the outbreak, the provincial GDP was expected to grow by 7.5–7.8% in 2020. The city’s attractiveness for doing business has grown rapidly - according to the report of the Milken Institute for 2019, Wuhan ranked 9th in terms of aggregate economic indicators among all Chinese cities, rising seven lines in a year. Business in the city ranged from biomedicine and chip manufacturing to auto parts. Coronavirus delivered a painful blow to all of this.
In February alone, Hubei’s domestic regional product fell by at least 50%, and budget lost about $ 1 billion, estimates Chen Bo, an economics professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan.
New life
Shopping centers in Wuhan reopened, but they are mostly empty, most people are still too scared to go shopping for non-essential items. “I'm happy if no one comes in,” admits sales assistant at Calvin Klein's store at Wuhan International Plaza. “It's safer.” Typically, customers left 20,000 yuan (about $ 3,000) in the store over the weekend, and there were only two purchases in the week that passed since the store opened after the outbreak on March 30.
Such sentiments are ubiquitous. For example, in order to maintain a distance between sellers in shops and buyers, real walls are build in the city - 2 meters in height.
The movement of residents remains under tight control, and officials are on high alert for an outbreak. The Chinese government tracks residents through QR codes embedded in Alipay payment system and Wechat social network. Each application user automatically receives their health status at midnight - green, yellow or red - depending on their location, basic health information and travel history. Only those with a green code can leave their apartments and go to work. It is easy to lose the color of the code necessary for movement: it is enough to visit a shopping center, where later a case of infection with coronavirus will be revealed — then the green color turns yellow and implies self-isolation of the house.
Xiaomi Corp. employees who return to work are instructed not to enter the office elevator for more than five people each. At the same time, you can only stand in the elevator in accordance with special marks on the floor.
Five-star hotels are up and running again, but the buffet has been reduced to a few basic dishes, packed in individual disposable containers.
Li Jing, 33, who provides visitors with apartments, admits that Wuhan is now “clearly not the place people choose to visit first.” To lure guests, before each check-in, Lee will carry out a three-hour disinfection and expand the menu of services for guests. However, he admits that his apartments may be vacant for several weeks and even months.
Investors will not come
Officially, the plants in Wuhan can already resume work, but people are not in a hurry to return to jobs, and the supply chain must now be reorganized. One of the largest factories in Wuhan is the joint production of Peugeot cars by the PSA Group and the Chinese Dongfeng Motor Group. Machine assembly has resumed, but employees indicate that supply chains are intermittent. According to one of the plant’s managers, Mei Yunfeng, many of the company's suppliers have not yet returned to the same level as business as ussual.
“The outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic destroyed Wuhan’s plans to integrate more tightly into the global supply chain,” said Professor Chen from Huazhong University. The implications for tourism and foreign investment will continue for a long time. Chen points out that after the outbreak of SARS in 2003, foreign direct investment in Guangdong, where the epidemic began, stopped for two to three years. “The same thing will happen to Wuhan,” he is pessimistic. “Investors will be careful, fearing new outbreaks of the disease, in addition, it will seem to them that the city is poorly managed.”
Their relatives, friends, friends of their friends died. In all families there is a tragic story: death, illness, poverty, bankruptcy. After 11 weeks of severe quarantine, the "lock" was opened and Wuhan City, the "heart" of the pandemic that has plagued the world is trying to come back to life.
The city with 11 million inhabitants begins to fall asleep after more than two and a half months, it was like a ghost. The new coronavirus started right here from an animal and bird market and spread uncontrolled across the globe. Today (April 8), a few days after China had no local transmission case, and just a day after the historic "no death of Covid-19" restrictions were lifted. The quarantine imposed on January 23 ended at midnight Tuesday through Wednesday, and passengers began storming buses and stations, some wearing full-length suits.
But the over 80,000 cases and 3,300 deaths remain behind and the hope that one day the world will look exactly like before the coronavirus. For now, it's just hope, because there's a long way to go.
Although some restrictions have been lifted by the authorities, many control measures remain in place. The Chinese were warned not to travel unless absolutely necessary. Those who go to Beijing go through two rounds of tests, and in other provinces, those who come to Wuhan have to be quarantined for two weeks, the New York Times writes.
In addition, everyone is required to use a tracking application on their phone or tablet and to prove that they were not sick or did not come into contact with sick people of COVID-19. The Chinese system records every place where people make payments and the network of hundreds of millions of surveillance video cameras is famous.
A jogger from Wuhan province in China was rushed to hospital after his lung collapsed following a 2.5-mile run while wearing a face covering.
After examining the doctors, the 26-year-old runner underwent an emergency operation in connection with the critical condition of his lungs. According to doctors, the reason for what happened was wearing a mask while jogging. This was reported by Fox News, citing a statement from the Wuhan Central Hospital in Weibo.
In a statement posted to Weibo, China's version of Twitter, the Wuhan Central Hospital said the 26-year-old suffered chest pain and shortness of breath. Upon examination, doctors found his left lung had compressed by 90 percent and his heart was moved to the right side of his body.
Pneumothorax occurs when air goes beyond the lungs. The operation was performed on the runner, and at the moment he is in a stable condition. According to doctors, a life-threatening condition was caused by the fact that the man wore a medical mask while running because of the threat of the spread of the coronavirus in Wuhan.
According to the hospital, the man went jogging about two weeks ago, increasing his distance daily. Having run about four kilometers, a resident of Wuhan felt bad and went home. When the man’s condition worsened, the family brought him to the hospital.
According to the director of the Department of Thoracic Surgery at Wuhan Hospital Chen Baojun, the man was already exposed to spontaneous pneumothorax due to his high growth and slender physique.
The Chinese city of Wuhan has become a hotbed of coronavirus infection. At the end of 2019, Chinese authorities informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of an outbreak of unknown pneumonia. The organization announced a pandemic of the new coronavirus in the world in early March.
As of the morning of May 17, the total number of people infected with coronavirus in the world exceeded 4.5 million people.
A 26-year-old man was declared the fattest person in Wuhan, after gaining 100 kilograms during the five-month quarantine in which the city was.
The man, identified only by the name Zhou, was overweight before the coronavirus crisis, but managed to keep his weight under control. He worked at a cafe in the city, had a busy schedule and led a relatively normal life, reports the International Business Times, which quotes the Chinese press.
But all that changed when Zhou began to spend most of his time at home. Unable to burn calories, he began to gain weight and, in a few months, weighed 280 kilograms, over 100 kilograms compared to before the coronavirus epidemic.
Zhou's shocking case came to the attention of doctors earlier this month. Because the man began to feel very ill, he decided to seek medical attention and so he was treated at Wuhan University Hospital. Doctors here found out that Zhou had not left the house at all for 5 months.
The young man is now being treated by Dr. Li Zhen, deputy director of the Center for Obesity and Metabolic Surgery at the University Hospital.
The doctor says the patient's obesity is caused by genetic factors and endocrine abnormalities, exacerbated by inactivity and increased caloric intake during the five-month isolation in Wuhan. He hopes that Zhou will be able to lose at least 50 kilograms, after which he will be able to undergo a stomach reduction surgery.
Wuhan city in China, where the outbreak of Coronavirus was recorded in December 2019, remains closed for entry and exit. How the city lives.
Wuhan is the administrative center of Hubei Province with a population of 11 million people.
There there are many automobile factories in the city and its surrounding areas, including General Motors, Nissan, Honda, etc. It is located between Yangtze and Hanshui rivers, fisheries flourish here. It was in the Wuhan fish market that an outbreak of coronavirus was recorded. Since January 23, 2020 the city is closed.
