Authorities in Wuhan, China, yesterday reversed a decision that would have allowed some people to leave the quarantined city at the center of the COVID-19 outbreak, reprimanding the officials who had made the announcement.
The city government in a statement said that a previous announcement had been made by a traffic prevention and control group “without the consent” of the local leadership.
“The announcement is declared invalid. In this regard, we have seriously dealt with the relevant personnel,” the city government said on a microblogging site.
Photo: AFP
“Wuhan resolutely implements the spirit of General Secretary [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s (習近平) important instructions on ‘preventing leaks (of the virus)’ ... strictly manages the passages leaving from Wuhan, strictly controls personnel, and strictly prevents the epidemic from going out,” it wrote.
The city government deleted the previous post that had announced the easing of restrictions barely three hours earlier.
Wuhan officials were already under fire for their handling of the outbreak — accused of initially covering it up, botching the response and causing confusion by changing the criteria for counting the number of cases.
Top Chinese Communist Party officials in Hubei Province and its capital, Wuhan, were sacked earlier this month, along with the region’s top health officials.
The city of 11 million has been under lockdown since Jan. 23 after authorities shut down transport links in the city in an effort to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
The now-scrapped decision would have allowed non-residents to leave if they show no symptoms of the coronavirus and had never had contact with patients, the deleted statement said.
People with special reasons to leave the city, including those who needed treatment for other medical conditions and those doing epidemic prevention work, would also have been allowed to leave.
The statement had said that departures would be staggered and people would have had to apply for permission from local authorities.
Once travelers reached their destination outside Wuhan, they would have had to report themselves to local authorities and monitor their health for 14 days.
The announcement would have also allowed people to enter the city for epidemic prevention or other production-related reasons or if they were Wuhan residents who had previously been unable to return home.
All but 11 of China’s 409 new cases yesterday were reported in Hubei Province. Wuhan reported 348 new coronavirus cases.
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