Hope is growing day by day in Wuhan. This Thursday evening, the city which is home to the coronavirus pandemic recorded no new cases in 24 hours, for the first time since January.
When the news was announced, the residents sang the national anthem at their windows, as if to signify the rebirth of their city, where the vast majority of the 3,245 Chinese deaths were recorded. Nationwide, eight new deaths have been registered in the past 24 hours, which adds hope.
#BONNENOUVELLE tonight #wuhan at 8 p.m. people shout and sing the national anthem 0 cases of contamination today #victory #soulagement #espoir @francetvchine @ GaelC21 pic.twitter.com/WFa2l6bVM7
- Arnauld Miguet (@arnauldmiguet) March 19, 2020As Western Europe confines itself a little more each day, certain traffic restrictions in force in Wuhan are starting to be relaxed. In so-called "epidemic-free" districts, residents can once again move around inside their homes, provided they do not regroup. Chinese President Xi Jinping even came to the city on March 10, and declared the epidemic "practically contained."
Relaxed restrictions and gradual restart of factories
Of course, it is too early to declare victory: the imposing mobile plastic or metal barriers are still enthroned at strategic crossroads. An army of neighborhood committee volunteers, the transmission belt for orders of power at the residential level, ensures strict compliance with containment measures. And the rare people to venture outside must show a white leg and submit to a temperature measurement to return to their home.
VIDEO. Coronavirus: China closes makeshift hospitals following the decline of the epidemic
But the results are there: since the beginning of March, the number of contaminations has decreased day by day. One of the emergency hospitals built at the start of the epidemic was closed, and the recovered patients returned to their homes. According to the official news agency Chine nouvelle, 3,787 carers sent to Wuhan between late January and early February to fight the epidemic have left the city in recent days.
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Some key businesses have also been allowed to gradually restart. According to the Qatari television channel Al Jazeera, which quotes the National Bureau of Statistics of China, in January and February, industrial production of the second world economy fell to the lowest since 1998.