Coronavirus: Millions locked down as Covid comes full circle to Wuhan

As China’s largest outbreak of Covid reaches Wuhan, state-run Global Times lashes ‘glaring loopholes’ in prevention measures.

A boy visits the "Enlightenment Of COVID-19" science exhibition in Wuhan. Picture: Getty Images.

Millions of Chinese have been confined to their homes as the largest outbreak of coronavirus reached Wuhan, the city where the virus emerged almost two years ago.

The authorities said that seven migrant workers who had travelled to Wuhan from the central Hunan province had been infected. They are the first cases in the city for more than a year and add to a growing Delta variant outbreak first linked to workers at the international airport in Nanjing.

In the city of Zhuzhou, Hunan, more than 1.2 million residents were placed under strict lockdown for the next three days, as the authorities rolled out a citywide testing and vaccination campaign, according to an official statement.

Beijing said it had tested millions of residents while cordoning off residential compounds and placing close contacts under quarantine. Officials said they would “spare no expense” to defend the city. They have stopped tourists entering the city and called on residents “not to leave unless necessary”.

Zhangjiajie, a tourist city in Hunan that was featured in the film Avatar, locked down all 1.5 million residents last week and asked anyone who had travelled from Nanjing to come forward.

China yesterday reported 55 new community infections, with the variant confirmed in 20 cities and a dozen provinces – although total cases remain low at 360 in the past two weeks.

The state-run Global Times newspaper called the outbreak the “most serious since Wuhan”, and criticised “glaring loopholes” in Covid prevention measures.

Covid cases in Yangzhou, near Nanjing, have been rising since Wednesday. Many factories and logistics firms in the city of five million have been shut as staff queued to get tested, some up to three times a week.

In the US, a Republican party-sponsored report has said the bio-laboratory in Wuhan, claimed by some to be source of the virus, had requested bids for renovations to air safety and waste treatment systems that had been operational for less than two years.

“Such a significant renovation so soon after the facility began operation appears unusual,” the report from the House foreign affairs committee’s Republican members, said. It queried “how well these systems were functioning prior to the outbreak of Covid-19”.

China has said repeatedly the virus was not accidentally released by the lab.

The Times