In Wuhan, where the COVID-19 pandemic began three years ago, many Chinese cities celebrated the arrival of the New Year on Saturday. Reuters reported that the gatherings were the first such large-scale gatherings since the government eased epidemic restrictions in Beijing.
“For your health and safety, don’t gather, don’t stop” – a message with this content was heard from loudspeakers on the streets of Wuhan. But residents eager for change after years of strict restrictions heeded the warnings.
Tens of thousands of people attended New Year’s celebrations, surrounded by large numbers of law enforcement officers, Reuters reported. “I lived and worked in a pandemic situation throughout 2022. I believe that 2023 will be everything that was before 2020,” wrote the resident of Jiangsu province, located in the eastern part of the country. On social media near Shanghai.
Welcoming the New Year in WuhanDingshu Wang / Reuters / Forum
End of “Zero Covid” policy
Officers China In December it removed most of the strict restrictions related to the “Zero Covid” policy, emphasizing that the currently dominant Omicron variant is much milder than the original variant. Corona virus and rarely causes pneumonia.
After abandoning mandatory testing and quarantine for infected people, the omicron variant coronavirus began to spread across the country on a large scale with almost no control. A wave of infections is overwhelming hospitals, with doctors and nurses in some places having to work despite being infected, pharmacies running out of antipyretics, and ears lining up in front of crematoriums.
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Masked commuters at a Beijing train station PAP/EPA/WU HAO
Center of infection
The first case of SARS-CoV-2 infection was detected in November 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of the Chinese province of Hubei with a population of 12 million. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic spread, inter alia, to Europe and North America. According to data from the Worldometer statistics portal, 6.7 million people have died of COVID-19 in the world so far.
Main photo source: Dingshu Wang / Reuters / Forum