Chinese president visits Wuhan
CHINESE President Xi Jinping yesterday made his first visit to Wuhan since a coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak forced a lockdown of the city of 11 million people, in a sign that authorities’ efforts to control the virus are working.
Xi’s arrived on the same day that Wuhan shut the last of 14 temporary hospitals, opened to manage a surge in coronavirus patients.
Earlier yesterday, China said it had just 19 new coronavirus infections on Monday, down from 40 a day earlier. That also marked the third straight day of no new domestically transmitted cases in mainland China outside of Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, even as the disease spreads rapidly in other countries, including Italy and the US.
“The situation of coronavirus prevention in Hubei and Wuhan has shown positive changes and achieved phased results, initially realising goals to stabilise and turn around the situation,” the official Xinhua news service cited Xi as saying.
He acknowledged that people under lengthy quarantine – Wuhan and much of Hubei province have been under strict controls since late January – may have frustrations to vent.
“We must understand and tolerate them,” he was quoted as saying.
During his visit, a masked Xi was shown meeting with local officials, medical staff, and volunteers, state broadcaster CCTV reported. He addressed front-line medical workers and a hospitalised patient by videolink. Residents of Wuhan were shown cheering Xi from their apartment windows, while negative comments on China’s heavily censored social media were quickly removed.
“Why only come now when the epidemic is almost over?” one comment on the official People’s Daily’s Weibo feed said before disappearing.
News of Xi’s Wuhan visit gave a lift to Chinese stocks, with the blue-chip index ending the day 2.1% higher after falling into negative territory in morning trade.
“It is obvious that Xi could not have visited Wuhan earlier because the risk of him contracting the virus there was initially too high,” said Zhang Ming, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing. “He is there now to reap the harvest. His being there means the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) may declare victory against the virus soon,” Zhang said.
China came in for criticism at home and globally over its early response to the outbreak, suppressing information and downplaying its risks, but its draconian efforts at control, including the lockdown of Wuhan and Hubei province, have been effective at curbing the spread.
Xi, who was mostly absent from Chinese state media coverage of the crisis in its early days, has become far more visible in recent weeks. Of the new coronavirus cases announced by China, 17 were in Wuhan. Two others – in Beijing and Guangdong province – involved people who had arrived from Britain and Spain, respectively.
That brings the total number of confirmed cases in mainland China so far to 80 754.
Chinese authorities have ramped up warnings about the risks from foreigners and Chinese nationals travelling to China from viral hotspots abroad such as Iran and Italy. As of Monday, there were 69 imported cases.
Also yesterday, Hubei said it would implement a “health code” system to allow people in areas at medium or low risk to start travelling. Qianjiang, a city in Hubei, said that all traffic checkpoints would be removed, public transportation will restart and firms will resume work in the near future, according to a report on an official website. Globally, more than 114 300 people have been infected by the coronavirus and over 4 000 have died, according to a Reuters tally of government announcements.
Since the outbreak, 59 897 patients have been discharged from hospitals in China. Recently discharged patients need to go into quarantine for 14 days.
A downward trend in new coronavirus cases in South Korea raised hope yesterday that Asia’s biggest outbreak outside China may be slowing, but officials urged vigilance with new clusters of infections emerging from a call centre and a dance class.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 35 new coronavirus cases, down from a peak of 909 on February 29.
The new figures brought the national tally to 7 513, while the death toll rose by eight to 59.
The fall in the daily tally of new infections to its lowest level in 11 days coincided with the completion of testing of most of the roughly 200 000 followers of a fringe Christian church at the centre of South Korea’s epidemic.
Yoon Tae-ho, director general for public health policy at the health ministry, urged businesses to do what they could to help stem the outbreak after the discovery of 64 new cases among call-centre workers and their relatives.
“The rate of increase is declining but there are still many new cases,” Yoon told a briefing. “We need to pay attention to crowded workplaces including call centres. The co-operation of business owners is essential as they shouldn’t let employees come in if they show symptoms like fever.”
More than 90% of South Korea’s cases have been in the south-eastern city of Daegu, where the church at the centre of the outbreak is based, and the nearby province of North Gyeongsang.
But alarm has been raised in the capital, Seoul, with the new cases there linked to the call-centre, operated by an insurance company.
Authorities are investigating in the cluster and say more infections are likely among the 200 people packed into the floor where the call-centre is located. They are being tested.