Coronavirus in China: "I am seeing how they remove a corpse inside a bag"

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Every afternoon, José María goes up to the roof of his building. Take a little air and contemplate the panoramic views that let you see the pollution. For two weeks, that is his only contact with the outside. "I am seeing how they remove a corpse from a building inside a bag. They put it in a van and take it to incinerate it. It is not the first time. There are infected elderly people who die in their homes because they do not want to go to the hospital," secure by phone while describing the scene that presence from the roof.

- How are you?

- Unable to leave. We have been like this for many days. It is hard to get used to. But at least we have the pantry full of food. I am talking to the consulate to try to fix my children's passports so we can be evacuated.

José María is one of the five Spaniards left in the province of Hubei, quarantined for a month. This researcher at the University of Granada, who has been living in China for 10 years, resides in a building in a city of three million inhabitants called Jingmen, 200 kilometers from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus. Together with his wife, of Chinese nationality, and their two young children, they have been trying for weeks to get out of there.

This man was one of the people who appeared on the initial list of the Spanish consulate for the evacuation that took place on January 30 from Wuhan to Spain, in a plane chartered by the British government. Although, in the end, the group of 21 returnees who later spent 14 days in quarantine at the Gómez Ulla Hospital in Madrid did not join. "It was difficult to leave because my wife does not have Spanish nationality and one of my children lacked a passport. In addition, they told us that we had to find our lives to get to Wuhan airport, and that is impossible because transport is paralyzed and nobody you can leave the city, "explains José María.

Both he and the rest of the Spaniards left in the province opened a possibility of evacuation last Friday in the plane that left from Wuhan to Ukraine, with 72 Ukrainians and Latin Americans. A plan that was not finished closing and now the only open path they have left is a possible departure with a group of Latin Americans to Colombia. Although they don't even have a possible date.

This Sunday was just one month since the sanitary bolt of Wuhan. A quarantine in a city with more inhabitants than New York that, days later, spread to the entire province of Hubei isolating more than 56 million people. An effective measure never seen that has hardened over the weeks. Now the neighbors cannot even leave their homes.

"At first I thought they left us here to die. We had very little information about what was going on," says Nima, a young woman from Luohansi District, north of Wuhan. "Maybe you could have acted before, but now I think everything the authorities have done to stop the virus was necessary. I've been trapped at home with my mother for two weeks. We don't even dare to look out the windows. It's like a prison, but if this serves to keep it from spreading, we accept it for as long as necessary, "says the girl.

"In my building, my third-party neighbors tested positive. The grandfather, the father, the mother and the son. Everyone. Since then they sealed the entrance to us and from time to time a deliveryman loaded with food appears to supply us. But it is crazy everything is going on, "says Jace, a twenty-year-old who studies in Shanghai and returned to Wuhan to be with his family during the Chinese New Year holidays.

"I, at the beginning of the quarantine, was still working at the hotel. Although it was empty, at least I had an occupation. Then we had to close and I don't know what to do anymore. I'm bored, I spend the day with my parents at home" Gao Hi account, receptionist of a central hotel. "My parents and I had never had a fluid conversation until now. We are still discussing politics."

What was the beginning of a strange outbreak of pneumonia a month ago, today is an epidemic that has already left Chinese borders and has other neighboring countries like South Korea in suspense - with more than 550 cases and five dead - and that has reached force even to Italy -150 cases and two dead. "Time is running out for action," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreye, WHO's director general , on Saturday, who is especially concerned about the spread of the virus in poorer countries such as Iran - 43 cases and eight dead - or spread across the continent African, who does not have enough infrastructure to control an epidemic that is spread at a speed of vertigo.

"The coronavirus epidemic is the most serious health emergency that has plagued China since 1949," Chinese President Xi Jinping acknowledged yesterday at a meeting where members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the main military leaders, were, and the most prominent officials. "It has been the fastest epidemic to spread, with the most infected and was the most difficult to prevent and control since the founding of the People's Republic," said the president, who even recognized some "gaps" in the response to the virus by from China. If we look at the latest data, the so-called COVID-19 has already left 77,000 infected and more than 2,400 dead.

If we return to the epicenter, to Wuhan, until now all the information pointed to the fact that the coronavirus had left a wild animal market, the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, where up to 47 species were sold: frogs, snakes, hedgehogs, badgers, crocodiles, wolf cubs, deer, rats, foxes, donkeys ... Instead, in a recent article published in the scientific journal The Lancet, several researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Agricultural University of South China and the Chinese Institute Brain Research, point to a recent study that would deny that the virus has its origin in this market.

According to his research: "Genetic data suggests that the virus was introduced from another place and that it had already circulated widely among humans in Wuhan before December 2019, probably in mid or late November. The crowded market facilitated the transmission of the virus to buyers and spread throughout the city on a large scale in early December 2019, which corresponds to the estimated time of population expansion. "

A few hours ago, we also learned that Wuhan authorities have decreed another 14-day quarantine for all already recovered coronavirus patients. This is because the doctors in the city have verified how people who have already healed have returned positive days later.

"This is very dangerous. Where do you put those patients? You can't send them home because they can infect others, but you can't put them in the hospital either because the resources are depleted," one of the doctors, Zhao Jianping, told the magazine. Southern People Weekly. And this does not happen only in Wuhan. In Hunan province, a woman tested positive on February 9, five days after being discharged from quarantine at a local hospital.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Wuhan
• China
• Xi Jinping
• Coronavirus
• Science and Health

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