Coronavirus: Sydney consultant’s family stays inside ‘just in case’

Australian businessman David Cao and his family narrowly avoided the Wuhan outbreak but are staying inside just in case.

Architectural design consultant David Cao.

Australian businessman David Cao and his family narrowly avoided the outbreak of the deadly Wuhan virus after returning home to Sydney last week, and are now observing their own self-imposed quarantine period.

Although Mr Cao, his wife and two daughters are symptom-free, the architectural design consultant is steering clear of friends and contacts from the city for about 10 days from their return last week “just in case”.

Mr Cao splits his time between Killara in Sydney’s northern suburbs and Wuhan, travelling each month to China where he runs the Wuhan office of Australian architectural designer Thomson ­Adsett.

He appealed for other people who have travelled from Wuhan to Australia recently to also stay at home for at least 10 days after flying in from China even if they do not have any flu symptoms. “People from Wuhan should stay at home for 10 days, just in case,” he said.

Mr Cao says he talks daily to his parents and parents-in-law who live in Wuhan. While they were not worried about their own personal situation, they were staying inside while the city dealt with the virus.

He said he had planned to return next month. “The city has been locked down now,” he said. “I don’t know when I can go back.”

Wuhan is a city of more than 11 million people, the seventh largest in the country, situated on the Yangtze River, west of Shanghai.

It is a centre of industries such as steelmaking but is reinventing itself as a city of modern business including carmaking and fibre ­optics with a new industrial park area called Optics Valley. The city recently hosted former Australian trade minister Andrew Robb, who is now a China consultant. The official Australian presence in Wuhan includes an Austrade office.

Wuhan is also the biggest university town in China with more than 50 universities and institutes of higher learning, with more than a million university students.

It boasts some of the best universities in China, including Wuhan University, Mr Cao’s alma mater, which has an exchange program with Melbourne-based La Trobe University.

In 1966 the city became famous as the place where 73-year-old Chairman Mao proved his physical fitness by joining the annual swim in the Yangtze River.

Known as one of the “furnaces” of China for its hot weather in summer, industrial Wuhan is in the process of changing into a city of modern skyscrapers.

Some 230 of the world’s 500 biggest companies are reported to have offices or China headquarters in the city.

More than 50 French companies including Renault have operations in Wuhan, which is also the headquarters of a joint venture ­between Citroen and Chinese car company Dongfeng.

Wuhan International Airport handles more than 20 million passengers a year and is a transit point for flights from China to Europe, Asia and Australia.