CHINAIMPOSES QUARANTINE
Govt expands massive lockdown effort, covering 13 cities; New Year festivities scrapped
WUHAN/BEIJING: Chinese authorities expanded a massive quarantine effort covering 13 cities on Friday to contain a deadly virus as nervous residents were checked for fevers and the death toll climbed to 26. China imposed transport bans in an area covering a staggering 41 million people.
With well more than 800 cases logged in China so far, a range of Lunar New Year festivities have been cancelled, with temporary closures of Beijing’s Forbidden City, Shanghai’s Disneyland and a section of the Great Wall to prevent the disease from spreading further.
China is in the midst of its Lunar New Year holiday, a typically joyous time of family gatherings and public festivities. But on Friday Wuhan was a ghost town, its streets deserted and stores shuttered.
Hospitals visited by AFP journalists bustled with worried patients being screened by staff wearing full-body protective suits.
At a temperature-check station, a medical staffer in a bodysuit, face mask and goggles took a thermometer from a middle-aged woman, pausing to examine the reading before quickly turning back to the patient.
With hundreds of millions of people on the move across China for the holiday, the government has halted all travel out of Wuhan, shut down its public transport and told residents to stay home. Deepening the isolation, there were few flights available to the city.
Besides Wuhan, 12 other smaller cities nearby have battened down the hatches, with most of them going public with various measures. Several of the cities have populations numbering several million, led by Huanggang with 7.5 million.