Residents of China’s Wuhan yesterday said they were hopeful for the future and no longer afraid of COVID-19, three years after the city was locked down over what was then a mysterious virus.
Since Beijing ordered Wuhan sealed off in a bid to suffocate the outbreak in January 2020, COVID-19 has devastated the planet, killing millions and plunging the global economy into turmoil.
However, life is now back to normal for many across the globe and after almost three years of grueling lockdowns and mandatory mass testing, Beijing last month lifted its hardline “zero COVID-19” policy.
Photo: AFP
As China celebrated Lunar New Year this week, Wuhan was unrecognizable compared with the apocalyptic scenes that gripped the city of 11 million in early 2020.
Locals braved icy temperatures to pack busy markets and families — some not wearing masks — bought toys and threw stones along the Yangtze River.
Many told reporters that they were elated that life was returning to normal.
“The new year will of course be better,” Yan Dongju, a cleaner in her 60s, told reporters. “We are not afraid of the virus anymore.”
“Now that we have opened up, everyone is quite happy,” delivery driver Liang Feicheng said, wearing glasses and a black mask to keep warm.
“A lot of our worries and depression have all slowly been resolved,” he added. “People are going about their lives, coming together with family and friends, going out to play and travel and being happy.”
The January 2020 decision to lock down the city, announced in the middle of the night, took Wuhan’s residents by surprise as the world watched on with uncertainty.
For 76 days, Wuhan was cut off from the world, with residents holed up in their homes for fear of being infected as hospitals overflowed with patients.
However, the horrifying scenes which marked the world’s first COVID-19 lockdown are now a thing of the past.
Outside a shop where Agence France-Presse captured the scene of a man who lay dying in the street in January 2020 — in an image that would become a symbol of the world’s fight against COVID-19 — a sign for a new school on the second floor reads “House of Hope.”
However, in a cogent reminder of the fraught geopolitics that would emerge as the virus spread across the globe, Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market — once suspected of being the epicenter of the outbreak — remains closed.
The area around the once-bustling wet market was desolate when reporters visited yesterday, although a police vehicle kept watch.
China, relatively unscathed for years after its initial outbreaks thanks to draconian “zero COVID-19” measures, has faced its biggest-ever case surge in recent weeks.
About 80 percent of the population is believed to have contracted COVID-19 since health restrictions were lifted last month, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou (吳尊友) said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home