There is a lockdown in China, tragically different to what has virtually been in force in a swathe of India for close to six months. Faced with the deadly outbreak of coronavirus, which may have claimed 80 lives until Monday, the authorities in Beijing have effected the closure of as many as 13 cities. With the suspension of public transport, the shutdown will affect a whopping 13 million people during the most important event of the nation’s calendar ~ the Lunar New Year.
Never in history has the occasion for boisterous nationwide celebrations been so direly dismal. More accurately, sickness knows no frontier and it is cause for alarm that France has reported the first three cases in Europe. Efforts to contain the new virus have been stepped up around the world, most particularly in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, the United States, Thailand and Vietnam.
The US, South Korea and Japan detected their second cases, and Singapore reported three more, for a total of four. Geographically, it is Asia that is most acutely affected. Friday’s partial closure of the Great Wall ~ almost synonymous with China’s landscape ~ showcases the enormity of the crisis. Millions across the country are stranded at the start of the Lunar New Year holiday amid growing anger about the government’s handling of the crisis.
Beijing’s famous temple fairs, a tradition during the celebrations, will not go ahead, while Shanghai Disneyland announced that it would also close indefinitely. What started as a major crisis in public health a week ago has exacerbated to the level of a national disaster. With a degree of alacrity that is worthy of emulation, the authorities were over the weekend racing against the clock to construct a new 1,000-bed hospital dedicated to the disease within days.
It is a measure of the promptitude that many countries would be proud of, but few able to claim. Yet some may even wonder if the closure of airports and train stations in Wuhan on Thursday morning were introduced too late not the least because many residents will already have set off for the holiday. On Friday, the Peoples Daily, the Chinese Communist party’s main newspaper, called for people who have recently been to Wuhan to isolate themselves at home, even if they don’t have symptoms. Beijing plans to take stricter and more targeted measures in the coming days.
The spread of the virus has not been cut off. Local authorities have been entrusted with more responsibility. The World Health Organization has stopped short of declaring the outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern, but has called on the global community to work together to fight the virus. China is in crisis, and it devolves on the comity of nations to respond to the challenge that is as contagious as it is potentially mortal.