Yangtze bridge lets people beat Hubei lockdown

They enter or leave province on foot, raising doubts over efficacy of move to contain virus

Police standing guard yesterday at a checkpoint at the Jiujiang Yangtze River Bridge that links Hubei province with Jiangxi province in China. The police said people were still entering Hubei and they could still get out, but only in "special circumstances".

PHOTO: REUTERS

JIUJIANG (China) • People are leaving and entering central China's Hubei province by foot over a bridge spanning the Yangtze River despite a virtual lockdown on vehicle traffic due to a coronavirus epidemic that has killed more than 200 people.

The Yangtze marks the dividing line between Jiujiang city in Jiangxi province and neighbouring Hubei's Huanggang, one of the cities hit hardest by the coronavirus outbreak and now sealed off from the rest of China in a bid to contain the pathogen.

But the foot traffic over the Yangtze shows the lockdown is permeable, raising doubts over its effectiveness and providing a glimpse at life inside the epicentre of what the World Health Organisation declared on Thursday as a global emergency.

Mr Wu Minzhou, a 40-year-old business owner who was fishing near the bridge on the Jiangxi side, said he was worried about the exceptions being made for people leaving Hubei.

"Because there is an... incubation period at play here, if they head out, for example, to cities in the north of China, then it is highly possible they will infect those areas too," he said.

While vehicles are not allowed over the bridge, it is still open to pedestrians.

Police said that people were still entering Hubei and they could still get out, but only in "special circumstances".

Those include people who were in Hubei but booked train tickets to leave from Jiujiang before the Chinese New Year.

"Everyone is panicking right now, but I think things are not that bad," a migrant worker, 45, who gave his name only as Guan, told Reuters after crossing from Hubei.

Another man said that he had driven to the bridge from Jiujiang with his friend, who was returning home to Hubei, a province of about 60 million people. Jiangxi province has some 45 million people.

"But once you get back, you cannot come out again," said the man, who gave his surname as Tian. "You have to stay there, stay at home. You can't come out."

The epidemic is believed to have originated in the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market in Hubei's provincial capital Wuhan.

Trains and other public transportation have been suspended, roads have been sealed off and checkpoints established at tollgates around Wuhan. The special measures have also been extended to other cities in Hubei province.

Though Jiujiang itself has not officially been locked down, its streets were mostly deserted and its tourist sites closed.

"You know, previously during this (holiday) time, a taxi driver's business would definitely be good because during the Chinese New Year, lots of people come home to be with their families," said taxi driver Guo Dongbo, 59, in Jiujiang.

"But this year, because there is this epidemic, we are all just following what the government has asked us to do. That is, we are at home almost all the time. We don't go out, and nobody else is out on the streets either."

In one of the residential areas of Jiujiang, a city of nearly five million people, a man carried a loudspeaker playing a recorded message ordering anyone who has been to Hubei recently to go and register with the local residents' committee.

By yesterday, the city had 42 confirmed cases of infection.

Elsewhere, shops were mostly shuttered, and the few restau-rants that remained open were mostly empty.

"Normally, at this time of the year, a lot of people come here.

"Now, there is nobody," said one vegetarian restaurant owner near the Donglin Buddhist temple in Jiujiang.

REUTERS