On January 23, 2020, Wuhan City unprecedentedly went into lockdown because of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, on the 5th anniversary of the Wuhan lockdown, what do the people of Wuhan feel?
In December 2019, the COVID-19 virus (also known as the CCP virus) emerged in Wuhan and spread rapidly. On January 23, 2020, the city of Wuhan with a population of 11 million implemented the lockdown.
The COVID-19 outbreak that originated in Wuhan eventually spread worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, by the end of 2024, over 7 million people globally had died from COVID-19. The pandemic destroyed economies and paralyzed healthcare systems in many countries.
The Wuhan lockdown lasted a total of 76 days.
A report from Agence France-Presse (AFP) on January 22 this year from Wuhan stated that life in Wuhan has now returned to normal. However, when residents were asked about the first lockdown due to COVID-19, they recalled it as “one of the most difficult months in their lives” with a bitter feeling.
After the Wuhan lockdown, thousands of workers were mobilized to build the Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital, a specialized hospital for COVID-19 patients, which officially admitted patients with CCP pneumonia starting from February 4 of that year. The hospital has now been abandoned.
A 20-year-old student named Mr. He living in Wuhan said that during the lockdown, he was still in high school, spending most of the academic year taking online classes at home. Even this year, he still feels that those years were truly difficult.
According to reports, during their stay in Wuhan, AFP reporters were followed by at least one car.
A Wuhan resident mentioned that “we don’t know how many people have died because there are no official reports. The statistics criteria are very strict. For example, only those who have been officially diagnosed and die in hospitals are counted, and they must die in specific wards or designated areas to be included in the statistics. The crematoriums operate 24 hours a day. There are four crematoriums in Wuhan, all operating normally. If they cremate a body every half an hour… you can do the math yourself.”
BBC Chinese recently reported that Guo Jing, a 34-year-old social worker from Wuhan, was one of the residents trapped at that time. With extremely limited freedom of movement, she witnessed shops closing, residents not receiving help, and their family members getting infected and dying. “These issues cannot be discussed after the lockdown, and people have to bear it on their own,” Guo Jing reflected. She expressed feeling very helpless as many lingering effects of the pandemic, or “secondary disasters,” have not been properly addressed to this day.
Liu Ting, a Taiwanese running a board game cafe in Wuhan, was trapped in the city during the lockdown and witnessed the darkest moments of the city. She had friends who encountered the unfortunate situation of their loved ones getting infected and dying at home.
At the age of 33, Liu Ting said, “At that time, the crematoriums were overwhelmed, there were no vehicles to pick up bodies, and the bodies were inside the homes… after several days, someone came to pick them up, took them away directly, and cremated them, with no one from the family able to follow.” She added, “At that moment, one would think how could such a thing happen, and at that time, my friends were also helpless, unable to solve anything and could only wait.”
Professor Yang Dali from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago studied the decision-making process in epidemic prevention and its impacts. He stated, “As the ‘epicenter’ of the epidemic, even now, the people of Wuhan still tremble in fear.” The lockdown is a watershed moment in the lives of many young people in Wuhan, and a trauma for the “COVID-19 generation” in China.
“From a historical perspective, five years may not be long, but for many young people, five years is a significant amount of time,” Yang Dali remarked.
Five years after the COVID-19 outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) once again urged China to share its data and information on December 30 of last year to understand the origin of the pandemic.
In a statement, the WHO mentioned, “We continue to call on China to share data and access so that we can understand the origin of the COVID-19 virus. This is an urgent matter of ethics and science. Without transparency, sharing, and cooperation among countries, the world cannot adequately prepare or prevent future pandemics and epidemics.”
The United Nations health agency recalled that on December 31, 2019, its office in China received a statement from the health department of Wuhan regarding the cases of “viral pneumonia” in the city. The agency stated, “In the subsequent weeks, months, and years, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our lives and our world.”