It’s been nearly five years since one of the deadliest outbreaks in history.
The first cases of SARS-CoV-2 – coronavirus were detected in China, in December 2019 and rapidly spread across Asia. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a public health emergency in January 2020 before officially recognising it as a global pandemic on March 11.
The sprawling metropolis of Wuhan is where the virus, that claimed 227,000 lives in the UK, first originated.
Located near the centre of China, Wuhan was little heard of – before Covid.
Over thirteen million people live in the city which is around the same size as London, built along the Yangtze river and considered to be a “foundation of in both hi-tech manufacturing and traditional manufacturing” in China.
As a business hub, Wuhan international airport handled 20 million passengers in 2016 – offering direct flights to London, Paris, Dubai, and other cities around the world.
It’s global connectivity allowed the virus to spread at an alarming rate.
But what of Wuhan now?
Relentless developments of the city post Covid has wiped out any remnants of its past, leaving a leaving a sense of ‘bitterness’ among the locals, according to Le Monde newspaper.
The French publication’s Wuhan special correspondent spent time in the city as it approaches its ominous anniversary.
Images of the Huanan wholesale market were broadcast on TV channels and newspapers worldwide five years ago, as being the suspected original source of the virus contamination.
Not far from Hankou’s main railway station, the building remains cordoned off here are posters to show it has been permanently relocated to another neighborhood.
Other less ‘famous’ business sites were not so adversely affected. One optician said he was able to open up his premises just a few months after Wuhan made global news in June 2020.
So closely linked to the emergence of Covid-19 since 2020, the market garnered a reputation for unsanitary conditions, and the future of the building remains uncertain.
“That was a long time ago. The fresh produce market had to go, but we can stay for now,” remarked the optician.
Overall the painful memories of the outbreak are overshadowed by the city’s rapid modernisation. The Yangtze River, bridged by impressive suspensions, is so vast here that it once separated cities.
Towering skyscrapers and scenic waterfront promenades strive to shed the city’s former industrial image.
Despite lagging behind more cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen, Wuhan is trying looking ahead – although with varying levels of success. Its traditional automotive sector is waning, with Renault and Peugeot-Citroën production lines shut down due to French manufacturers’ struggles in the Chinese market and the rise of electric vehicles.
Back in 2020 there was a significant French population but due to this decline, approximately 1,000 French nationals have departed, a consequence of both the pandemic and these economic shifts.
Some areas are on the rise though with Wuhan now among the leaders in lasers and fiber optics, and it’s the birthplace of Yangtze Memory, China’s burgeoning computer memory chip titan. The company is at the forefront of the semiconductor battle between Beijing and Washington.
Central China’s largest city is also investing heavily in driverless technology. On its streets, a common sight is taxis zipping past autonomous vehicles with steering wheels turning eerily by themselves.
Despite these tech advancements, the haunting early days of Covid, with delayed warnings and swamped hospitals, linger in the city’s collective memory. “It’s like a wound that has turned into a scar over time; it will always remain, but people understand it’s better left untouched,” remarked one young local man to the Monde reporter.
The young man became a citizen journalist when the number of cases soared in early 2020, following the initial infections at the end of the previous year.
He also offered his services, utilising his vehicle to ferry patients and their relatives during the city’s shutdown on January 23, 2020 – a day etched in the memory of every local.
Many of Wuhan’s residents believe that, from that date onward, the powers that be went all out to stop the spread and shield its populace. “All those completely empty streets, it was strange, like a bad dream, but it helped slow the virus,” he reflected.
This sentiment was bolstered as they observed other nations waver over implementing lockdowns and using masks including England where even the UK’s chief medical officer a the time, Professor Sir Chris Whitty remarked that the country reacted too late.
Speaking to the Covid inquiry in 2023, Professor Whitty said that the first lockdown on March 16 2020 was imposed “a bit too late”.
In contrast Wuhan endured 76 days of strict lockdown and mourning, before returning to a relatively ordinary life.
However the pivotal weeks before China’s formal admission on January 20, 2020, confirmed human-to-human transmission of the virus—coinciding with President Xi Jinping’s inaugural public address concerning the health crisis—still represent a touchy issue.
Dr Li Wenliang, the medic from Wuhan Central Hospital was arrested by police on January 1, 2020, for warning his co-workers about the dangers of the virus.
He drew parallels to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) while discussing the situation. Despite warnings from authorities about “making false comments”, they reassured the public for several weeks about the unfolding events.
All this happened as the annual Communist Party Congress for Hubei province took place, and travel increased leading up to the Lunar New Year.
Wenliang tragically succumbed to the virus on February 7, 2020, just three days after the Supreme People’s Court exonerated him. “There’s still a bitterness. Many people think that, had he been listened to, the response [to try to contain the virus] would have been quicker. And I think so too,” the citizen journalist told the Le Monde journalist.
Those who, like him, chronicled the initial handling of the pandemic in Wuhan often faced harsh consequences, such as former lawyer Zhang Zhan, who journeyed from Shanghai to the epicentre in Hubei and received a four-year prison sentence. Released in May, she remains under close watch in Shanghai.
Freedom of speech discussing Covid in Wuhan is lacking. Doctors who were once open to interviews around 2020 are now compelled to decline them.
However one local who were hospitalised with the virus spoke to Le Monde.
Gao, a 23-year-old teacher was a high school student when she contracted the virus on January 21, 2020.
It was there that she encountered the overwhelming situation in the hospitals, with medical staff donned in masks and protective suits: “It was a shock.”
In the following days, the death toll began to rise, and hospitals were out of beds leaving people to die at home. Most were elderly and in fragile health, and mass testing hadn’t been introduced yet. “We didn’t know what they had died from,” said Gao’s mother, a 49 year old public company employee.
She remembered the worry about food deliveries, at least until China declared a nationwide mobilization effort to support Wuhan.
In the city’s western region, at the Biandanshan cemetery – one of Wuhan’s largest – rows of urns adorned with portraits of those who passed away in spring 2020, etched on marble plaques, serve as a stark reminder of the city’s heavy death toll. While the official count stood at 3,869 until the lockdown was lifted in April 2020, the actual figure was likely much higher.
Those dated from late 2022 also indicate the abrupt end of the zero-Covid policy, at a point when the country had lost control of the infection count.
To the south of Wuhan, dilapidated prefabs fenced off from prying eyes are all that’s left of Leishenshan Hospital, a facility assembled in a staggering 10 days to deal with an overwhelming tide of patients. Not far to the southeast, and a mere half-hour drive from the city’s heart, the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology looms with its red-brick façade and a distinctive white-fronted square annex.
As well as the food market, this high-security biosafety lab has been thrust into the spotlight, entangled in persistent theories of a pathogen leak.
The people of Wuhan still yearn for clarity on the virus’s origins.
“People are hoping for a scientific answer one day,” one citizen journalist relayed. “But they are aware of how political the issue has become.”
