Monitoring Desk
XIANNING, China (Reuters): Life started returning to normal on Wednesday after two months of lockdown in Hubei province, epicenter of China’s coronavirus outbreak, with traffic controls lifted, construction resuming and people catching buses and trains across once-shut borders. Mainland China also reported a drop in new confirmed coronavirus cases to 47 on Tuesday, all of them in travelers returning home, down from 78 infections reported a day earlier.
Hubei, a central province that is home to some 60 million people, had announced on Tuesday that it was removing travel restrictions at midnight. “I booked my ticket this morning after hearing the news,” said Chen Ting, who was accompanied by her three-year-old son among about 40 people getting off a train in Hubei’s Xianning city. The 28-year-old had traveled from Qingyuan city in the southern province of Guangdong, where she runs a wholesale business. The coronavirus had forced her to cancel plans to visit her parents in February, after the Lunar New Year.
“I am so desperate to go back home now to see all of them there,” she said as she waited for her father to pick them up and drive to the family home in the nearby city of Huangshi. On Wednesday evening in Xiangang, residents strolled outside, carrying groceries or buying takeaway. Restaurants were only serving food for takeaway. Loudspeakers blared out promotions like buy one get one free. Everyone wore masks. The lockdown of Hubei’s capital Wuhan will be lifted on April 8, a milestone in China’s war against the epidemic as Beijing shifts its focus towards stemming imported cases and rebooting the economy.
In Wuhan, there were also signs of normal life returning. Men in protective masks worked on a bridge as construction projects resumed, and residents waved from their apartment windows as a visiting medical team prepared to leave the city. The Hubei government on Wednesday told workers who had been quarantined at home to go back to work as soon as possible. The Wudang Mountains, a top scenic site, reopened for visitors. Hubei Party Secretary Ying Yong said the government would continue to work hard to prevent a rebound in infections as population movements increase.
Travelers arriving in Xianning were subject to checks that lasted about 30 minutes and asked to show “health codes” on their mobile phones that proved they had not been in a high-risk area in the last fourteen days. (Reuters)
