Wuhan tastes freedom after 76 days
BEIJING: Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged in December, ended its 11-week lockdown on Wednesday but restrictions on the movement of people were put in place in a northeastern province amid fears of a new wave of infections triggered by Covid-19 cases from abroad.
China on Wednesday reported 62 new confirmed cases, 59 of which were imported - a sharp rise from 32 a day before. More than 1000 imported cases have been reported in China so far. The overall figures stand at 81,802 i nfections and 3, 333 deaths.
The northeastern Heilongjiang province, bordering Russia, registered a daily high of 25 new imported cases among Chinese travellers returning to the mainland.
Suifenhe city in Heilongjiang restricted the movement of its citizens on Wednesday in a similar fashion to that of Wuhan - residents must stay in residential compounds and one person from a family can leave once every three days to buy necessities and must return on the same day, state-run CCTV reported.
“In Jiaozhou city in the eastern province of Shandong, the risk level had risen from low to medium, according to a post on an official website, but it gave no f urt her det a i l s , ” Reuters reported.
In Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China, the city borders were opened for the first time since January 23, when it was put under a lockdown to contain the spread of the virus.
Official news agency, Xinhua, reported that more than 55,000 passengers were expected to l e a v e Wuhan b y t r a i n o n Wednesday, and about 40% of them are going to the Pearl river delta region in southern China.
A total of 276 passenger trains were to leave Wuhan for Shanghai, Shenzhen and other cities. The c i t y o f 1 1 mil l i o n had accounted for a vast majority of cases in China with more than 50,000 infected and 2,572 killed.