Hubei lockdown to end as virus epidemic abates
Print Edition
CHINESE authorities said yesterday they will end a two-month lockdown of most of the coronavirus-hit Hubei Province at midnight, as domestic cases continue to subside.
People with a green health code, meaning no contact with any infected or suspected COVID-19 cases, will be allowed to leave Hubei, the provincial government said. Wuhan, the hardest hit city, will lift outbound travel restrictions from April 8, according to a circular issued by the provincial COVID-19 control headquarters.
Wuhan will take differentiated measures to promote the resumption of business operations based on the health risks of different regions to mitigate the impact on the economy, the circular said.
Three airports in the cities of Xiangyang and Enshi, and the Shennongjia Forestry District will resume flights from today, CCTV reported.
China barred people from leaving or entering Wuhan from January 23 in a surprise middle-of-the-night announcement and expanded it to most of Hubei in succeeding days. Train service and flights were canceled and checkpoints set up on roads into the central province.
The drastic steps came as the coronavirus began spreading to the rest of China and overseas during the Lunar New Year holiday, when many Chinese travel.
The virus raged for weeks in Wuhan and surrounding cities. Hospitals overflowed, and temporary ones were set up to try to isolate the growing number of infected patients.
The outbreak was gradually brought under control, and Hubei has seen almost no new infections for over a week.
China has now largely turned its attention to the threat of the virus returning from abroad, with almost all new cases being recorded among passengers traveling in from overseas.
At the same time, the government is pushing efforts to kick-start the world’s second-largest economy. About 85 percent of all industrial enterprises with an annual turnover of 20 million yuan (US$2.8 million) in Hubei had resumed production as of Monday, according to the provincial department of economy and information technology.
As of Monday, 13,155 such enterprises in Hubei had resumed work, with 1.71 million employees having returned to their posts, accounting for 60.3 percent of the total.
The department has been providing assistance to enterprises on issues such as manpower shortage, logistics and capital flow to help them resume work in an orderly manner, it said.
So far, of the 103 enterprises with an annual revenue or output value of over 1 billion yuan in Hubei’s raw material industry, 87 have started work, with a resumption rate of 84.47 percent. All 28 enterprises in the pharmaceutical industry with an annual revenue or output value of more than 1 billion yuan have resumed work.
About 120,000 migrant workers, including many who had made the traditional trip home to Hubei for Lunar New Year, have already been allowed to leave in recent days on special buses and trains to manufacturing centers such as Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces.
New cases have slowed dramatically over the last month, although the first locally transmitted infection in nearly a week was reported in Wuhan yesterday. Guangdong Province also reported one domestically transmitted case, and Beijing and Shanghai each reported one case infected by an imported patient. Hubei saw seven new deaths, all of which were in Wuhan, bringing the total fatalities in the province to 3,160.
Risks remain
The province also saw 444 patients discharged from hospital after recovery on Monday. Among the 4,200 patients being treated in hospital, 1,203 were still in severe condition and another 336 in critical condition, according to the commission.
Hubei has so far reported a total of 67,801 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 50,006 in Wuhan.
Despite the easing virus situation, China cannot afford to let its guard down amid risk from sporadic infections as well as those from overseas, a health official said yesterday.
Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission, told a press briefing that “prevention and control work could still not be relaxed.”
Citing the overall number of COVID-19 patients across the globe has gone beyond 300,000, Mi said that the risk of spreading caused by sporadic new cases and imported cases still exists in China.
Wang Guiqiang, a doctor with Beijing First Hospital, said at the briefing that initial appraisals of the coronavirus showed that its infectious period was longer than SARS and flu.
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