Lockdown restrictions gradually lifted in city at centre of outbreak

Shopkeepers in the city at the centre of the virus outbreak in China were reopening yesterday but customers were scarce after authorities lifted more of the anti-virus controls that kept tens of millions of people at home for two months.

“I’m so excited, I want to cry,” said a woman in the Chuhe Hanjie pedestrian shopping area.

She said she was a teacher in the eastern city of Nanjing visiting her family in Wuhan when the government locked down the city in late January to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Some 70% to 80% of shops on the retail street were open but many imposed limits on how many people could enter.

Shopkeepers set up dispensers for hand sanitiser and checked customers for signs of fever. Wuhan’s bus and train service has resumed, easing curbs that cut most access to the city of 11 million people on January 23 as China fought the coronavirus.

The train station reopened on Saturday, bringing thousands of people to what is the manufacturing and transportation hub of central China.

China had suffered 3,186 coronavirus deaths, including 2,547 in Wuhan, as of midnight on Sunday, according to the National Health Commission.

The country had a total of 81,470 confirmed cases.

Civil protection volunteers work to disinfect the streets of Barcelona in Spain

A store employee waits for customers in Wuhan