Authorities in Wuhan’s Jiangxia region, home to more than 970,000 people, announced on Wednesday that its main urban areas would impose three days of “temporary control measures”. Entertainment venues — including bars, movie theaters and Internet cafes — small clinics and agricultural markets were closed. Restaurants and large gatherings, from performances to conferences, were suspended. All places of worship were closed and religious activities were banned. while educational institutions and tourist attractions stopped operating, according to a government announcement. All public transport, from buses to metro services, has been suspended and residents have been asked not to leave the area unless absolutely necessary. Authorities also identified four high-risk neighborhoods where residents are prohibited from leaving their homes. Another four neighborhoods were classified as medium risk, meaning residents cannot leave their homes. The measures were aimed “to further reduce the flow of people, reduce the risk of cross-contamination and achieve dynamic zeroing of COVID-19 in the shortest possible time,” the statement said. The sweeping restrictions came shortly after authorities in the Jiangxia region announced the discovery of four asymptomatic infections late Tuesday. Two were detected during routine testing, while the other two were found among their close contacts. Wuhan, a transportation and industrial hub in central China’s Hubei province, imposed the world’s first COVID lockdown in early 2020 to contain the raging coronavirus after initially downplaying the outbreak and silencing health workers who tried to sound the alarm. The strict lockdown closed businesses and confined residents to their homes for more than two months. The paralyzing lockdown took a huge personal toll on residents, but ultimately managed to tame the virus. Despite the initial mishandling, the Chinese government has heralded Wuhan as a success story in its fight against the pandemic. In August 2020, as much of the world grappled with COVID-19, Wuhan made international headlines when it held an electronic music festival in an outdoor water park, with thousands of people partying without masks or social distancing. Meanwhile, strict measures of emergency lockdowns, mass testing and strict quarantine have been used by authorities across China to contain sporadic cases, in what has become known as the Zero COVID strategy. This approach was mostly effective in containing coronavirus outbreaks in China until this year, when the highly contagious Omicron variant caused the country’s largest outbreak since Wuhan. The financial hub of Shanghai has been on lockdown for more than two months, sparking public outcry over widespread food shortages and delayed medical care for emergency patients. Cities and towns across the country are also under varying degrees of restrictions as infections spread, with some border towns experiencing intermittent lockdowns for months. The lockdowns also caused widespread damage to the Chinese economy, plunging it into its slowest quarterly growth since the start of the pandemic. As much of the world turned away from the pandemic, Chinese officials, including the country’s leader Xi Jinping, have repeatedly vowed to uphold a zero-Covid policy, citing low vaccination rates among the elderly.
