China, from which the coronavirus pandemic started, lifted the city of Wuhan on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday. At midnight local time (4 p.m. GMT Tuesday), authorities lifted the final restrictions preventing them from leaving the city, the birthplace of Covid-19, which has killed more than 75,000 people worldwide.

A sign of the beginning of the end of the health crisis in China, hundreds of passengers were preparing to leave Wuhan by train, when the authorities lifted the closure.

Since January 23, people present in this municipality of 11 million inhabitants of the center of the country could not leave the borders of the commune.

At one of the city's train stations, some excitement was noticeable as hundreds of passengers waited for their train, an AFP team noted. "I have been blocked for 77 days!" Rejoiced a man on condition of anonymity, impatient to be able to return to Changsha, some 350 kilometers away.

Zhen, a young woman of 24, was quick to book a ticket to leave for Canton (South) at night, from the first hours, and thus avoid the rush. "I am relatively calm, the epidemic has stabilized," she told AFP.

"City of heroes"

Agents, however, reminded travelers of hygiene measures, including staying one meter apart, while an announcement on loudspeakers called Wuhan "a city of heroes."

The day before and for the first time since the start of the pandemic, the Chinese Ministry of Health had reported zero new deaths linked to Covid-19 in the country.

Wuhan remains, by far, the most bereaved city in China, with more than 2,500 people killed due to the virus, out of a national official total of more than 3,330 deaths.

The number of flights and trains departing from the city remains limited, however. Wuhan will also maintain various restrictions on movement in the city to prevent any resurgence of infections.

Because the town hall remains on the alert: it has withdrawn this week from 70 residential districts previously classified "without epidemic" this designation which allows the inhabitants to leave their accommodation. The municipality justified this decision by the discovery of asymptomatic people, who have no cough or fever, but can still transmit the virus.

China reported its first death on January 11. Since then, nearly 82,000 people have been infected in the country, including 3,331 fatally.

The decline in recent weeks in cases of contamination and death in the country is however accompanied by doubts about the reliability of official figures published by the government.

Families have notably reported in the Chinese press that people who died at home or were not tested at the start of the epidemic, when hospitals were overcrowded, did not count.

With AFP

The France 24 week summary invites you to come back to the news that marked the week

I subscribe

Take international news everywhere with you! Download the France 24 app

google-play-badge_FR