These amazing pictures reveal thousands of people gathered in a water-park in Wuhan, China, the city where the CoVid-19 pandemic is believed to have begun. It was here in this city of 11 million people in November 2019 that doctors began noticing patients with a strange pneumonia type illness that was killing and spreading at a rapid rate. Before long, CoVid-19 had engulfed the globe with 22 million cases and almost 800,000 deaths now confirmed to date, 170,000 of those deaths occurring in the United States.
These pictures, captured at the Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park, are a million miles away from the fear and terror that gripped the city just a few months ago. Indeed, from January 2019 the city was placed into a strict lockdown, much stricter than almost all other lockdowns seen elsewhere in the world, and saw residents confined to their homes for months. What also assisted Wuhan was the fact that only 17 people had died and 400 confirmed cases being in existence when the lockdown was imposed. Even so, over 1,000 people were to officially die in the city by May 2020.
*GETTY IMAGES
*GETTY IMAGES
Some have questioned the figures given by Chinese authorities, with some suggesting that tens of thousands have died, as is the case in most Western countries, however official World Health Organisation data does not back this up.
Thanks to the lockdown since May, there have been zero domestically transmitted cases in the Wuhan region and life is getting back to normal. Since June street-stalls and shopping malls have been back up and running and since July everything from libraries to parks and museums have returned to a 'new normal'.
While caution is still taken, the fact that thousands were willing to congregate in the water park indicates that many citizens now feel that normality is returning. That does not mean things are the way they were before, places such as amusement parks still receive half the number of visitors they did before, as some social distancing measures are still in place and the public remain wary that things could take a turn for the worse if they don't maintain caution.
They are right to be cautious. In just the last few weeks, New Zealand, which had no CoVid-19 cases for 100 days, saw new confirmed cases with an entirely unknown origin, leading to lockdown measures being reinstated.
Sanjaya Senanayake, an infectious disease expert at the Australian National University, warned on seeing the pictures from Wuhan:
"The problem is we haven't eradicated CoVid-19, and what that means is that as long as it is not eradicated, there's still the risk of having it introduced, whether from overseas or elsewhere. A study from London came out suggesting that about 10-20% of people with Covid-19 are responsible for about 80% of cases. So if you're putting large groups of people together you really have to be careful. Even if one person has the virus, you're in for some rough times."
It is hoped that the success Wuhan has seen in fighting, if not defeating the virus, can now be replicated in cities across the globe.
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