China ending lockdown on Wuhan

China has had some of its major cities on lockdown over the past couple of months to contain potential outbreaks.

This type of lock down is different from what we have here in the US.

In the US, “lock down” typically means only being able to leave your place for essential needs.

In many locations, we are able to go outside when we want and go for a walk and even congregate outside in small groups. And of course, we can head out to certain stores whenever we need to.

In China, the lockdown has been much more stringent.

They have had orders that require citizens to wear masks when heading outdoors and they have limited the time that people can spend outdoors. They even used artificial intelligence facial recognition applications to find citizens who were not wearing masks and shut down public transportation. 

And finally they also deployed a tracking system so that people could find out if they had come into contact with someone who had been carrying the disease. 

In short, the lockdown has been a big step up from what we have experienced here in our country.

And remember, Wuhan is a city of about 11 million people, so we are talking about a lockdown of a massive metropolis. 

But finally, China has announced that they will be removing the lock down on April 6 at the place where this disease is thought to have originated (Wuhan). 

China has continued to report zero additional cases in many locations. There is a level of skepticism about these results though given how China was not forthcoming about details related to the disease in the beginning stages.

While I am skeptic about the zero additional cases reported, it is a very encouraging sign to see that they are lifting the lock down on different locations. It will be very interesting to monitor how things resume back to normal in China and if infection rates spike again once people are coming in to close contact with each other. I think the whole world will be watching.

H/T