Coronavirus Restrictions Return to Wuhan

Wuhan, China – the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic – was once again placed under coronavirus restrictions on Monday, including travel restrictions and mandatory nucleic acid testing.

Wuhan has not yet been subjected to the brutal lockdown imposed on Shanghai, which has become a major human rights crisis three weeks after it was supposed to be shuttered temporarily in stages for citywide testing.

China’s state-run Global Times on Monday reported the ominous arrival of top epidemic prevention officials to deal with an ostensibly tiny Wuhan outbreak that might have begun with four workers who traveled to Shanghai to build field hospitals. The controls they imposed on Wuhan make the situation sound more serious than the mere 33 asymptomatic cases officially reported to date:

Measures should be strictly implemented to ensure that people from key areas returning to Hubei are investigated, inspected and detained on arrival. Illegal activities such as evading inspection should be dealt with in accordance with the law, and unannounced inspections should be strengthened to eliminate risks and hidden dangers.

Wuhan, the capital city of the province, also required passengers who take public transport such as bus and subway to hold a 48-hour valid nucleic acid test results, the Wuhan Metro Operation Company and Wuhan Public Transport Group announced on Monday as 12 of 33 silent carriers were reported in the city on Sunday.

The Global Times reported long lines at testing centers as Wuhan residents obediently queued up for nucleic acid tests. The city was scheduled to process almost 4 million tests by Tuesday. Residents who participated said they were given certificates that would permit them to “enter public facilities such as shopping malls, or take buses.”

Some Taiwanese citizens living in Wuhan told Taiwan News on Monday that the situation was less optimistic and controlled than portrayed by Chinese state media. 

The Taiwanese correspondents saw signs of a possible lockdown looming, advising each other on social media to stockpile food so they can avoid the plight of Shanghai’s captive residents. These observers said that Wuhan officials have ordered at least 11 million nucleic acid tests, far more than the four million mentioned by the Global Times. 

“According to the Shanghai script, the next step is lockdown of the city,” one Taiwanese correspondent grimly observed.

The Global Times reported mass coronavirus testing has also been ordered in Yichang and Jingzhou, two other cities in Wuhan’s Hubei province. Both of those cities have supposedly found zero cases of Omicron infection, but are acting out of caution.