People are leaving and entering China’s Hubei Province by foot over a bridge spanning the Yangtze River, despite a virtual lockdown on vehicle traffic due to a coronavirus epidemic that has killed at least 200 people.
The Yangtze marks the dividing line between Jiujiang in Jiangxi Province and Hubei’s Huanggang, one of the cities hit hardest by the coronavirus outbreak and now sealed off from the rest of China to try to contain the pathogen.
However, foot traffic over the Yangtze shows that the lockdown is permeable, raising doubts over its effectiveness and providing a glimpse at life inside the epicenter of what the WHO has called a global emergency.
Photo: Reuters
Wu Minzhou, a 40-year-old business owner who was fishing near the Jiujiang Yangtze River Bridge on the Jiangxi side, said that he was worried about the exceptions being made for people leaving Hubei.
“Because there’s an ... incubation period at play here, if they head out, for example, to cities in the north of China, then it’s highly possible they will infect those areas, too,” he said.
While vehicles are not allowed over the bridge, it is still open to pedestrians.
Police said that people were still entering Hubei and they could still get out, but only in “special circumstances.”
Those include people who were in Hubei, but booked train tickets to leave from Jiujiang before the Lunar New Year holiday.
“Everyone’s panicking right now, but I think things are not that bad,” 45-year-old migrant worker Guan told reporters after crossing from Hubei.
Another man told reporters that he had driven to the bridge from Jiujiang with his friend, who was returning home to Hubei, a province of about 60 million people.
“But once you get back you cannot come out again,” said the man, who gave his surname as Tian (田). “You have to stay there, stay at home. You can’t come out.”
The epidemic is believed to have originated in a seafood market in the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan.
Trains and other public transportation have been suspended, roads have been sealed off and checkpoints established at tollgates around Wuhan, while the special measures have been extended to other cities in Hubei Province.
Although Jiujiang has not officially been locked down, its streets were mostly deserted and its tourist sites closed on Thursday, officially the last day of China’s Lunar New Year celebrations.
“You know before, during this [holiday] time, a taxi driver’s business would definitely be good, because during Spring Festival lots of people come home to be with their families,” 59-year-old local taxi driver Guo Dongbo said.
“But this year, because there is this epidemic, we are all just following what the government has asked us to do. That is, we’re at home almost all the time. We don’t go out and nobody else is out on the streets either,” he added.
In one of the residential areas of Jiujiang, a city of nearly 5 million people, a man carried a loudspeaker playing a recorded message ordering anyone who has been to Hubei recently to go and register with the local residents committee.
As of yesterday, the city had 42 confirmed cases of infection.
Elsewhere, shops were mostly shuttered and the few restaurants that remained open were mostly empty.
“Normally at this time of year, a lot of people come here. Now there’s nobody,” said one vegetarian restaurant owner near the Donglin Buddhist temple in Jiujiang.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese