Fear still stalks the streets of ground zero
Every week our correspondents will bring a taste of life on their patch during the pandemic. This week Sophia Yan writes from Wuhan
Monday
THE guard at the station eyes my ticket: Beijing to Wuhan, the lockeddown ground zero of the coronavirus pandemic.
“You sure? No mistake?” he asks. “No mistake,” I say.
My colleague and I disinfect our seats with wipes the minute we get on the five-hour high-speed train.
Coming to Wuhan may change my “green” health code – a contagion risk profile, which determines the difference between going out to dinner or government quarantine.
Traffic is sparse, though busier than expected. I chat with people in a park, out for their first strolls after nearly three months indoors. I walk by Huanan seafood market, where experts think the virus emerged, and find it sealed with corrugated metal, and patrolled by officers.
At the end of the day, I check my health code again: Still green. Whew!
Tuesday
I bid good morning to a hotel cleaner in a hazmat suit and head out.
Cai Yao, 34, tells me his mother’s symptoms appearing in late January worsened quickly; she only returned home two weeks ago.
“For a whole week, she couldn’t eat. She coughed up blood, and her nose would bleed,” he said. They drove daily across town for outpatient treatment, waiting 10 hours in line with many others. Mr Cai doesn’t know what shots were administered.
At the peak, 5,000 bodies waited to be scorched into ash at one of Wuhan’s eight crematoria, a worker tells me – a far cry from two dozen per day before the pandemic. His shifts began at 5:30am and ended after dark.
Such accounts cast doubt over China’s reported death toll of about 3,300, especially as fatalities elsewhere exceed that figure.
Virus deaths are so sensitive that at a cemetery – which the bereaved haven’t been allowed to visit – uniformed officers and plainclothes minders surround me. When I try to leave, they drag me backward, and snatch my phone. “What if you report about this incident?” one sneers.
They accuse us of sneaking in to take photos. Actually, we’d walked in the front gate, registered after a temperature check and roamed for half an hour. After berating us (“stupid imbeciles”) for about an hour, they let us go after taking photos of our ID. Our driver says the police also harassed him and recorded his details.
Residents have told me they don’t think they’ll ever learn the truth of what happened. All this leads me to ponder what the authorities are trying to hide – even as China crows success.
‘Residents tell me they don’t think they’ll ever learn the truth. It leads me to ponder what China is trying to hide’
Wednesday
Freedom! Sort of. Lockdowns lift today in Wuhan. But things are far from normal. Transport links start coming back online, and major roads are unsealed. Cars started lining up at city limits before midnight.
But quotas have been imposed – only 1,000 a day are allowed to enter Beijing from Wuhan – after showing a clean bill of health.
Some housing compounds continue barring residents from going out, or limiting them to two hours a day. Metal barriers have yet to all come down. Same with cement road blocks.
Disinfecting tents continue to dot the city. Getting in and out of my hotel still requires being sprayed with medical-grade alcohol.
Thursday
Requirements to depart Wuhan apply to me, so I head to the city’s No. 7 hospital to have my throat swabbed for a test to determine whether I’ve been infected.
At the hospital entrance, a thermal facial recognition camera takes my temperature. Amazingly, this works with a face mask. I don goggles and feel even more claustrophobic.
Medical staff have protective suits, shoe covers, face shields; one spritzes sanitiser over his latex gloves. Haunting to be inside. So many people died here, staff say.
Doors are sealed in the fever clinic, dozens of oxygen tanks sit outside, and an extra CT machine is in a trailer.
Next step: Registering via a mobile app to be approved for return and quarantine confirmation. Long queue – at least 11,000 have already applied.
Glad to pass an open wine shop. I stock up; might be here a while.
Friday
A seafood vendor tells me she heard patient zero was a man in his seventies selling wild ducks at Huanan market. Others deny any Huanan link, and tell me unspecified foreigners brought it during the World Military Games last October, held in Wuhan.
Wu Jianming, 29, a glassworker says: “Bats are impossible – when I was a child, we often played with them.”
The most prevalent rumour is that the Americans brought the virus. One man says the severity of infections is evidence the virus emerged in the US, an idea seeded by a Chinese official.
Beijing has been busy reframing the narrative, portraying China as the world leader in virus response. Some see it differently – that a botched initial response exacerbated global spread.
Saturday
We bundle into a van for a government-arranged trip to Leishenshan Hospital, a temporary field hospital. Hospital officials say thousands have recovered. We’re shown an empty virus ward with sealed rooms waiting to be disinfected.
“All data are reliable; please rest assured,” they say. Yet doubts persist over the numbers. Hospitals were overwhelmed; there were multiple revisions to confirming cases; and those not tested – despite having what doctors strongly hinted was the virus – weren’t included in the death toll.
With curbs still in place, authorities remain concerned. Even as Wuhan reports zero deaths, the hospital won’t be dismantled until next year.
Get virus results back. Relieved to be negative!