Coronavirus: Life at ground zero of Wuhan ‘like bad school holidays’

Adelaide expats the Carters have spent much of the past week holed up in their 20th-floor apartment in the centre of Wuhan.

Australian Simon Carter and daughter Imogen in their flat in Wuhan, China. Picture: Supplied

Amid a rising death toll, spiralling rates of infection and a plan to airlift Aussies from China and place them in quarantine on Christmas Island, Adelaide expat Simon Carter and his Chinese wife and daughter have a more mundane domestic concern: cabin fever.

Mr Carter, 51, a geophysicist who has lived in Wuhan for four years with his wife, Sunrui, and their six-year-old daughter, Imogen, likens the coronavirus outbreak to a more dramatic version of school holidays.

With city transport shut down and residents ordered to stay indoors, the Carters have spent much of the past week holed up in their 20th-floor apartment in the centre of Wuhan.

When not working at a Wuhan university, Mr Carter enjoys jazz and plays double bass in a band with a group of fellow scientists. He jokes that his wife has already threatened to throw both his ­instrument and LP collection off the balcony.

“We have been crawling up the walls a bit,” he told The Australian. “All we have been doing is watching movies and listening to music and sitting around and trying to keep ourselves entertained. ­

“Occasionally we get to make the odd visit to the local supermarket, which is something.

“It’s more boring than terrifying, to be honest. It is actually a whole lot less dramatic than is being made out. We have been able to get information about what is going on through social media and the Western media and the local authorities have been keeping people informed about what’s happening. We are trying to keep a sense of perspective.”

Writing in The Australian today, Mr Carter, a graduate of the University of Adelaide who met Sunrui on campus in the mid-2000s while doing a PhD in mathematics, tells how the biggest change in daily life in this city of 11 million has left parks and streets devoid of people.

“This is China,” he says.

“Usually it is packed but that hasn’t been the case. It has been ­really sad for people ahead of Chinese New Year; it’s like Christmas being cancelled in Australia, if you can imagine that.”

Mr Carter says he has seen ­little evidence of panic or outbreaks of public disorder, saying people are trying to lead their lives as normally as possible.

Pointing to the BBC, he says some coverage about hospitals being choked with patients has been over the top. He adds China has no system of GPs and the hospitals are always packed.

“I had an ear infection last year and the hospital was pretty chaotic back then,” he said.

“I am not saying that things haven’t changed; they have. A few weeks ago, hardly anyone was wearing masks, even though they occasionally do in China; now we are all wearing them, even though I am not sure if they make much difference.”

Mr Carter has no plans to take up the Australian government’s offer of being evacuated to Christmas Island and placed in quarantine. He had hoped to return to Adelaide for a conference in March but says that is now on ice.

“I have been reassuring myself and my family that what we are looking at here is hopefully a bad outbreak of the flu, albeit a new form of the flu,” he says. “If you look at the profile of the people who are coming down with it, and in some cases dying, it seems like they are the usual vulnerable groups who sadly are afflicted.

“The numbers are still lower than those who perished last year in the Australian flu season.”