China finally sees the end of the epidemic? The country did not register any death due to the epidemic of Covid-19 this Tuesday, a first for three months as the city of Wuhan is preparing to reopen its doors to the outside. Strict guidelines must be observed, however, to prevent a new start of the disease.
Coronavirus appeared in China in late 2019 and has since killed more than 70,000 people worldwide. In order to stem the spread of this virus, China had decreed at the end of January the drastic confinement of more than 50 million people in Wuhan, cradle of the epidemic, and in the rest of the province of Hubei (center).
The invisible threat of the asymptomatic
Paid technique: after having exceeded one hundred in February, the daily number of deaths has plunged in recent weeks, to fall to the figure of zero announced Tuesday by the Ministry of Health. But this reassuring figure must be tempered. Because two new risks have appeared: infected people arriving from abroad, and the invisible threat of asymptomatic patients - who have no cough or fever but can still transmit the virus.
However, the town hall remains on the alert: it has withdrawn from 70 residential districts previously classified "without epidemic" this designation which allows residents to leave their homes. The municipality justified this decision by the discovery in these residential complexes of asymptomatic people. Wuhan reported 34 new cases on Monday.
Wuhan doors open
Hubei residents were confined to their homes for two months. At the end of March, those of them who do not live in Wuhan were able to get out of their homes and even leave the province, provided they were not sick. And one of the last big hurdles will soon jump in a few hours: at midnight local time on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, healthy people will be allowed to leave the provincial capital.
But the candidates for departure are limited by the reduction in the number of flights and trains serving Wuhan, a measure imposed at the height of the epidemic, the town hall told AFP. The municipality also stressed that various restrictions on movement in the city would be maintained. Objective stated: prevent any resurgence of infections.
"Increased vigilance"
"Many people think that from April 8, they will be able to relax a bit. But in reality, we will need increased vigilance, " the Hubei Daily said on Sunday, quoting a senior official from Wuhan. "There will be no relaxation," he promised.
The decline in recent weeks of contamination and death in China is accompanied by doubts about the reliability of official figures released by the government. China reported its first death on January 11. Since then, nearly 82,000 people have been infected in the country, including 3,331 fatally, a toll widely questioned. 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.
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