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Wuhan, a year after the confinement, still with emotional scars

2021-01-25T12:04:47.519Z


On the surface, Wuhan bustles like a city that has never seen a crippling 76-day lockdown. Wuhan, China (CNN) - On the surface, Wuhan bustles like a city that has never experienced a crippling 76-day lockdown. At dawn, the market vendors busily unload fresh fruits and vegetables. Office workers fill popular restaurants during lunchtime. In the evening, older couples descend on city parks to dance along the Yangtze River. Red lanterns have been erected around the city in anticipation of


Wuhan, China (CNN) -

On the surface, Wuhan bustles like a city that has never experienced a crippling 76-day lockdown.

At dawn, the market vendors busily unload fresh fruits and vegetables.

Office workers fill popular restaurants during lunchtime.

In the evening, older couples descend on city parks to dance along the Yangtze River.

Red lanterns have been erected around the city in anticipation of the Lunar New Year celebrations.

It's been a year since the central Chinese city of 11 million people was placed under the world's first coronavirus lockdown on January 23.

At least 3,869 Wuhan residents eventually died from the virus, which has since claimed more than two million lives worldwide.

Couples by the Yangtze River.

The world was stunned when flights, trains and buses leaving Wuhan were canceled, roads were blocked and people were ordered to stay at their homes, relying on officials and volunteers for their daily needs.

Initially, it was difficult for patients, families, and even some healthcare workers to reach hospitals.

But since then, the Chinese government has heralded those drastic steps as crucial to curbing the initial outbreak, and similar measures have now been applied in countries around the world, with some cities outside of China subjected to multiple lockdowns.

In that context, Wuhan has become a success story in domesticating the virus.

It has not reported a local coronavirus infection for months.

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On December 31, as millions of people in other countries spent New Year's Eve in the confinement of another lockdown, Wuhan residents filled the glittering streets to celebrate the arrival of 2021 with a midnight countdown.

Today, residents speak with pride of the resilience and strength of their city, and the efforts they made to protect themselves from COVID-19.

But the harsh measures also came at great personal cost to residents, and despite the apparent return to normal life, deep emotional scars haunt the city.

Some residents who lost loved ones to the virus are still grieving, angry at the government for its first missteps in preventing people from learning events that could have saved lives.

Wuhan says goodbye to 2020 with a New Year countdown of thousands of people.

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"Searching for the truth is the best way to remember it"

Yang Min, 50, still wonders if her daughter would be alive if she had been told the coronavirus was contagious just four days earlier.

On January 16, her 24-year-old daughter went to the hospital to receive chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer.

Health workers had already fallen ill from the virus, a dangerous sign that it was infectious, but their cases had not been made public.

Instead, Wuhan officials insisted that "there was no obvious evidence of person-to-person transmission" and maintained that the virus was "preventable and controllable."

Three days later, the night before authorities finally admitted that the virus is transmittable from person to person on January 20, Yang's daughter developed a high fever.

She was transferred to another hospital, before finally ending up at Jinyintan Hospital, a designated facility for coronavirus patients.

He died there on February 6.

Yang believes her daughter contracted the virus in hospital and blames the government for not warning people about the severity and true nature of the outbreak earlier.

"If I knew there is an infectious disease, I would not send my daughter (to the hospital for cancer treatment)," Yang said.

"I sent her to the hospital to live, not die."

While caring for her daughter, Yang also contracted the virus.

Her husband did not tell Yang that their daughter had died until she recovered, fearing that the news would devastate her.

In late February, he learned that he would never see his daughter again.

“My last memory of my daughter was her crown and hair when they took her (to the ICU) on a stretcher.

He didn't even look at me.

It still hurts, ”he said.

Yang accused the government of covering up the seriousness of the initial outbreak and says he has met with local officials several times to demand accountability.

“The street and district leaders told me that (the Government) did not cover up the pandemic.

(They said they) posted a notice online on December 31, "he said.

On December 31, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a statement reporting the discovery of a cluster of "pneumonia" cases.

But he claimed there were no signs of "person-to-person transmission."

Red lanterns to celebrate the Lunar New Year in Wuhan.

Around the same time, authorities silenced healthcare workers who tried to sound the virus alarm, including Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang, who was punished by police for "spreading rumors" and later died of COVID-19.

The crackdown likely led to unnecessary cross-infections within hospitals, as well as in families and communities, according to health experts.

In an interview with state broadcaster CCTV on January 27, then-Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang admitted that his government did not disclose information about the coronavirus "in a timely manner."

He said the city's handling of the epidemic was "not good enough" and offered to resign if it helped efforts to control the crisis.

Two weeks later, amid widespread public criticism of the authorities' handling of the outbreak, several senior local officials were removed from their posts, but Zhou stayed.

Last week, state media reported that Zhou had resigned due to an unspecified "job agreement."

Yang wants all officials involved in the early handling of the Wuhan crisis to be punished and the truth told about their actions.

I want to hold them accountable.

I need to ask for an explanation.

If there is no explanation, there is no justice, "he said.

"Finding the truth for my daughter ... is the best way to remember it."

"I am also a patriot"

Yang is not the only family member of a grieving victim demanding justice.

Zhang Hai, who lost his father to the coronavirus, spent much of the past year trying to sue the government for compensation for his father's death.

Taking the government to court is a rare, and often futile, step in China, where the judiciary is tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

Still, Zhang was not discouraged.

He filed a lawsuit against the Wuhan and Hubei provincial governments in June, but a local court rejected the case.

He went to a higher level court two months later, only to be dismissed again.

In November, he filed a complaint, seen by CNN, for his case to be heard at China's highest judicial body, the Supreme People's Court, but has received no response so far.

“'Rule the country by law' and 'everyone is equal before the law' have long been the mottos of our country.

But so far, I haven't seen any evidence of that, ”he said.

Like Yang, Zhang blames the Wuhan government for hiding the truth about the coronavirus.

On January 17, the day after Yang sent his daughter for cancer treatment, Zhang took her father, Zhang Lifa, to a Wuhan hospital to treat her broken leg.

The surgery went smoothly, but his father became infected with COVID-19 while recovering in the hospital.

He died on February 1, at the age of 76.

Masks remain one of the signs showing Wuhan's past as the epicenter of the deadly pandemic.

"I feel very sensitive and at the same time my heart is full of anger," said Zhang, standing by the water in a park in Wuhan: it was the last place the father and son visited together, before going to the hospital.

"If the Wuhan government had not concealed (the severity of the outbreak), my father would not have left this world," he said.

Zhang's father was an army veteran working in China's nuclear weapons program and suffered long-term health effects from his work.

My father is a patriot.

He sacrificed his youth and health for the country, ”said Zhang.

And I'm also a patriot.

By speaking out and seeking accountability, I am carrying out an act of patriotism.

No country, no political party can be perfect.

In Wuhan, officials covered up (the outbreak) and went unpunished.

By punishing them, I believe that a service is being done to our country and our party, "he said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said last month that allegations that China covered up the epidemic were "simply unfounded."

Wang said: “There is a clear timeline of China's effort to combat COVID-19, which is open and transparent.

At the earliest possible moment, we report the epidemic to WHO, identify the pathogen and share its genomic sequence with the world, and share our information and experience of containing the virus with other countries and regions in a timely manner.

LEE

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And it's ready to deliver

A tale of triumph

There is little indication that the Chinese government will address Yang's and Zhang's complaints.

A week before the first anniversary of the Wuhan closure, more than 90 grieving family members suddenly discovered that their WeChat group had been closed, according to Zhang.

The group had been a source of support for Zhang and others, and provided an exceptional space for them to share their grief.

Facing mounting criticism and blame from countries around the world, Beijing has unleashed its army of propagandists and censors to reshape the narrative around its response to the coronavirus as victorious from the start, and stifle any voice that strays from the official line.

Crowds return to Wuhan's famous Jianghan shopping street, which was deserted a year ago.

China's subsequent success in containing the virus has been used as evidence to deny that mistakes were made in the early stages.

Wang said: “Faced with the only pandemic in a century, can such achievements be achieved by covering up the truth?

The answer is quite simple.

China's achievements in fighting the pandemic are the best answer to the fallacy that China hid the virus. "

Authorities have detained citizen journalists who documented the harsh reality of life in Wuhan during the height of the outbreak.

One of them, Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, was sentenced to four years in prison last month for "seeking a fight and causing trouble."

The story of Wuhan, according to the official narrative, has become one of heroism, solidarity and triumph.

An exhibition called "Putting People and Lives First: A Special Exhibition on Fighting the Covid-19 Pandemic."

At a city convention center, which previously served as a makeshift quarantine site for COVID-19 patients, a massive exhibition was opened in October to commemorate the city's fight against the coronavirus.

It is titled "Putting People and Lives First: A Special Exhibition on Fighting the Covid-19 Pandemic" and features more than 1,000 articles that remind visitors of the effort and sacrifice that healthcare workers make. , soldiers, volunteers, officials and citizens did to defeat the virus.

The Party's unwavering leadership on the struggle is highlighted throughout the exhibition, but no mistakes made by the government are mentioned.

“The propaganda machine is in full force to promote the success of the government;

the difficulties are over and now we can sing and dance in celebration of peace, "said Zhang Hai.

"But the supposed victory was achieved by sacrificing the people."

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«The most tormenting moment»

In the heart of downtown Wuhan, there is an unmistakable reminder that not everything has recovered from the coronavirus: the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where a cluster of coronavirus cases was first detected, boosting the international notoriety of the coronavirus. site.

The Huanan Seafood Market, known as ground zero for the outbreak, was closed last January.

Today, the market, with its name removed from the gates, remains closed behind metal fences, and its future uncertain.

Xiao Chuan'an, who sells sugar cane near the market, remembers the closure with dread.

When the restrictions began, Xiao, who hails from a neighboring city, was trapped in Wuhan for more than two months.

In the days leading up to the imposition of the confinement, his daughter had begged him to go home, but Xiao did not want to abandon his stock of sugar cane.

In the end, he couldn't sell any of it;

as the blockade dragged on, their sugar cane rotted.

“I really did wash my face with tears every day.

It was the most tormenting moment, and I was so sad and scared, ”she said.

But the strict measures apparently worked.

By mid-March, the number of new infections had dropped to a trickle into the thousands a day at its worst in February.

Residents were allowed to return to work.

Public buses and subways resumed service.

Finally, on April 8, the lockdown was officially lifted.

Chinese authorities have largely been able to avoid a Wuhan-style city-wide lockdown during subsequent local outbreaks, by resorting to massive testing, extensive contact tracing, and more targeted restrictions.

As the pandemic spreads, China's overall success in containing the virus, especially when compared to the chaotic and deadly failures of countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, has garnered broad domestic support for Beijing.

A year after closing, Xiao's business resumed outside the closed market.

It's not as good as the pre-pandemic times, but Xiao remains hopeful.

"Wuhan will definitely get better and better," he said.

"The people of Wuhan are very tough and doing very well."

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"Those efforts paid off"

But the virus can return after a long breath.

Earlier this month, tens of millions of people in northern China were subjected to strict lockdowns, similar to what Wuhan suffered, after hundreds of people were infected in the country's worst outbreak in months.

Authorities are also rushing to build a massive quarantine camp that can hold more than 4,000 people, reminiscent of previous efforts in Wuhan, where several medical facilities, including a 1,000-bed hospital, were built from scratch in just 10 days. .

The lockdown in 2020 turned Wuhan's busy business district into a ghost town.

These sweeping measures have evoked familiar memories for some Wuhan residents, who once again wear masks in public, as do people now in Beijing and Shanghai, with the country entering a cautious mode ahead of the Lunar New Year next month.

The festival generally sees tens of millions of Chinese traveling home to reunite with their family.

But authorities have deterred people from traveling this year, requiring those returning to rural areas to submit a negative COVID-19 test taken within 7 days and a 14-day quarantine upon arrival.

Wu Hui, a 40-year-old food delivery driver in Wuhan, said he hoped this time the authorities in north China would learn from the initial chaos in Wuhan and handle things in a more humane way during their lockdowns.

“During the initial stage of the closure of Wuhan, (the Government) did not know how to deal with the problems related to the livelihood of the residents, it was a total disaster.

I'm sure everyone hasn't forgotten, ”he wrote in a post on Weibo last week.

Wu said the people of Wuhan paid "a high price" when their city was confined, but that he was proud that the city could get by.

“Now, after so long, no new cases have been identified and Wuhan has started to recover for a while.

The streets are full of people.

I just feel like all those efforts made at that time were worth it, "he said.

David Culver reported from Wuhan, Nectar Gan wrote from Hong Kong.

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-01-25

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