People rush trains, take to highways as Wuhan lifts lockdown

Bloomberg

Zeng Xiao couldn’t stop taking her temperature, or thinking about her cat.
After getting caught up 76 days ago in the government-ordered lockdown of Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic began, she was finally going home. With travel restrictions lifted on Wednesday, she was taking the very first train out of town: the 12:50 am to Guangzhou, in China’s south.
The temperature taking was something of a nervous tick. Zeng wasn’t sick but still she fretted that train inspectors would somehow determine she had developed a fever and block from her from boarding. With the railway station coursing with police and people trying to leave, Zeng was ecstatic when she passed the inspection. “I haven’t seen my cat in almost three months,” said the 22-year-old teacher. “I’m very happy there are finally trains going out.”
Zeng is one of the some 55,000 people with train tickets out of Wuhan on Wednesday, according to Chinese state television. Flights are resuming from the city’s international airport, which handled 24 million passengers a year before the outbreak, and people will be able to return to their jobs around the country. Cars queued at toll booths to get onto the highways out of town.
But the lockdown’s end doesn’t mean Wuhan has returned to normal. A web of complex restrictions and fear of a resurgence in infections mean many can’t — or won’t dare to — go anywhere.
With Wuhan’s economy crushed by the virus, the government’s priority is on getting people back to work, and those returning to their jobs will see greater freedom of movement. Some apartment blocks will require residents to prove they are leaving the premises to return to work before they are allowed out.
Housing compounds in the city will also retain the power to put residents under lockdown again, containing them in their homes if new virus
infections are found or suspected on their grounds, Wuhan’s top Communist Party official said earlier this week.
The prospect of the pathogen roaring back is a real concern in Wuhan, where several residents interviewed
by Bloomberg spoke with trepidation, not happiness, about the lifting of the lockdown measures.
“I will only feel safe going out in June when the summer heat can kill the virus,” said Fu Bianlin, a 60-year-old lifelong resident of Wuhan, speaking from her home by phone. “The end of quarantine could bring more suspicious risks as more people start moving around.”