Wuhan: An Indelible Mark
Wuhan: An Indelible Mark Shayma Zhou YiYi | Al Jazeera Correspondent – China
It was a cold night on the first day of April. Wuhan railway station was empty, except for a few health officials in white protective suits, awaiting the only train arriving from the capital, Beijing. The only passengers on board were an Al Jazeera crew. We went through a lengthy and complicated process to be allowed into the city, including taking tests. We headed to the only hotel operating in Wuhan. It was catering solely to members of the media. The streets were shrouded in a deafening silence, broken occasionally by an ambulance siren blaring. All night long, trucks sprayed disinfectant across the city. We started our coverage by attempting to get into Wuhan Central Hospital, but were denied access. We had to maintain a distance of 50 metres from the facility. Wuhan saw the peak of the outbreak in February 2020 with 14,000 confirmed cases and more than 200 deaths in a single day. It had been put into a complete lockdown in January 2020. No one was allowed in or out of the city of 11 million people. All shops, except those selling groceries, were shut down. Public transportation was also suspended. When the order to lock down came, only six hours’ notice was given. Millions of people ran to the highways and railway stations to escape. It is thought that as many as five million managed to.
Yu, aged 22, volunteered to deliver medicine and other essentials to those in need during the lockdown. “I posted an ad on WeChat that I deliver masks, diapers and other basic necessities free of charge. I was about to deliver some painkillers to a family one day, and I heard a lady screaming. She was labouring; and refused to go to hospital for fear of infection,” he told us. We interviewed 30-year-old Wang from behind his residential complex fence. He lost his uncle and grandmother to the virus. “We did not realise how fatal the virus was. We assumed it was like the 2003 SARS. My uncle left his job to attend my grandmother; he was soon infected. Hospitals were overcrowded, so they were treated at home. The lockdown came to add insult to injury,” he said. After four months of quarantine and lockdown, Wang lost his job and was living on government social welfare. “Many people here recovered but later relapsed, so no one is allowed to leave the neighbourhood. I lost many friends and loved ones. It will take some time to get by,” he added.
Wu and his wife had attempted to leave Wuhan before the lockdown came into effect, but failed. “Every cloud has a silver lining,” he said. Unable to leave, Wu came back to find his 90-year- old grandmother, who lives alone, had contracted the virus. “Grandmother does not know she has cancer. She was attended to by a nurse who is no longer available due to the lockdown. [The] ambulance refused to take her to hospital for being old. Luckily we could not leave the city [so could] attend [to] her. She is now better.”
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