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From a ghost town to normal life: what is happening today in Wuhan, where the pandemic broke out three years ago?

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“We are no longer afraid!” residents of Wuhan, who have recovered, said this Monday a completely normal life three years after the start of a severe and traumatic confinement to fight the covid-19.

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Wuhan, in east-central China, has been suffering since late 2019 due to the outbreak of an unknown viruswhich has caused pneumonia in an increasing number of its inhabitants.

The virus has put this industrial city of 11 million inhabitants at the center of global media interest.

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Wuhan authorities decided on January 23, 2020 to confine the city, a month and a half before the World Health Organization (WHO) deemed the virus a global pandemic that caused Millions of dead in the world.

Three years later, life has returned to normal in most countries, including China, which announced the end of most of its health restrictions in early December.

Practically this Monday there was no sign of the ghost town that Wuhan has become in January 2020.

Despite a chilling wind, its residents took advantage of the Chinese New Year festivities to shop at street markets or stroll along the banks of the Yangtze River.

Some elderly people were stretching, while other Wuhan citizens were flying kites.

Many of them also visited the Guiyuan Temple, one of the most famous buildings in the city and opened for the first time in the last three years for the Chinese New Year festivities.

“The new year that is starting now will undoubtedly be the best. We are no longer afraid of the virus!” Yan Dongju, a maintenance agent in his 60s, told AFP.

A little further on, a young motorcycle messenger for pre-cooked meals proves him right.

“Everyone has recovered a normal life. They stay with family, with friends, go out to have fun or travel. They smile again”explains Liang Feicheng.

“We are no longer as worried and restless as we were then,” says this delivery boy, who wore goggles and a mask to protect himself from the freezing cold.

the night of the birth

The lockdown in January 2020, announced in the middle of the night and applied a few hours latertaken by surprise to the inhabitants of this Chinese metropolis.

Airports and railway stations, as well as road links, have been closed.

Wuhan was cut off from the world for 76 days, with its residents locked in their homes and hospitals overwhelmed by the arrival of the sick.

But the chaos of three years ago it’s already a thing of the past.

Opposite a shop where AFP photographed a corpse lying on the sidewalk, they have opened a school whose name seems to be a nod to passing that critical period: “The House of Hope”.

The Huanan Seafood Market, suspected to be the epicenter of the outbreak, was shut down in 2020.

Large blue barriers continue to protect that place, in front of which was a police car.

The coronavirus continues

Despite the return to normality of the inhabitants of Wuhan, as well as in the rest of China, this does not mean that the coronavirus has disappeared from the Asian giant.

Around 80% of the population in China has contracted covid-19 since the lifting of health restrictions in early December, according to the epidemiologist Wu Zunyu, a point of reference in the country in the fight against the virus.

China reported at least 13,000 new deaths “related to covid-19” this weekend between January 13-19.

This figure, that only reflects deaths in hospitalsit adds to the 60,000 deaths since December, previously announced by the authorities.

Undoubtedly, it is a partial balance a country with 1.4 billion inhabitants, when numerous hospitals and crematoria have been overwhelmed in the last month.

By Sébastien Ricc and Vivian Lin, AFP

ap

Source: Clarin

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