COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei
By December 31, Wuhan CCDC confirmed a cluster of unknown pneumonia cases linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market after unverified documents appeared on the Internet.
[6][7][8][9] The delayed and controversial response by authorities in Wuhan and Hubei failed to contain the outbreak in the early stages, leading to criticism from the public and the media.
[16][17] The Politburo of the Communist Party of China formed a special leading group for epidemic control led by Premier Li Keqiang.
[23] The region also saw a huge shortage of face masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) despite being the world's biggest manufacturing hub for those products.
[27][28] On March 13, 2020, an unverified report from the South China Morning Post suggested that a COVID-19 case, traced back to November 17, 2019, in a 55-year-old from Hubei province, may have been the first patient.
As a precaution, she told her colleagues to wear protective gear and prepare a specialized area in the hospital to receive patients with similar conditions.
The letters required all hospitals in Wuhan to report any pneumonia patient with unknown causes related to the Huanan Seafood Market.
According to Caixin,[50] the local government of Wuhan denied any case of nosocomial infection and kept claiming that "there was no clear sign of human-to-human transmission."
[50] On January 19, despite the virus outbreak, over 40,000 Wuhan families joined an annual potluck banquet,[68] which was a community tradition observed for over two decades to celebrate the Kitchen God Festival.
"[74] On January 22, Wuhan was still "an open city" to the virus outbreak where most people did not wear a mask, although the NHC announced the coronavirus-associated pneumonia as a notifiable disease.
Wang Duan, the Caixin journalist who made the interview described such behavior as "personal attacks" and complained that no expert came forward to refute what Guan said.
[77] On January 23, 2020, the central government of the People's Republic of China imposed a lockdown in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province in an effort to quarantine the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
[90] On the same day, China Railway and Civil Aviation Administration announced that the passengers were allowed to cancel stays or change dates for free if they booked a ticket from or to Wuhan.
[98][99] It also extended free refund and changing policy that originally applied to Wuhan to all parts of mainland China to reduce population movement.
[112][113] Wuhan's citizens rushed to the railway stations to leave the city before lockdown, leading to long queues[113] and many later posted about their success.
[120] By January 24, Huangshi, Chibi, Jingzhou, Yichang, Xiaogan, Jingmen, Zhijiang, Qianjiang, Xiantao, Xianning, Dangyang and Enshi restricted inbound and outbound traffic, affecting over 40 million residents.
[22] Semi-log graph of 3-day rolling average of new cases and deaths in China during COVID-19 epidemic showing the lockdown on January 23 and partial lifting on March 19.
[43][123] The World Health Organization called the Wuhan lockdown unprecedented and said that it showed how committed that the authorities were to contain a viral breakout.
It also drew comparisons to the lockdown of the poor West Point neighborhood in Liberia during the 2014 ebola outbreak which was lifted after ten days.
A medical historian named Howard Markel argued that the Chinese government "may now be overreacting, imposing an unjustifiable burden on the population" and said that "incremental restrictions, enforced steadily and transparently tended to work far better than draconian measures.
"[129] Nonetheless, after northern Italy became a new hotspot of the outbreak in late February, the Italian government enacted what has been called a "Wuhan-style lockdown" by quarantining nearly a dozen towns of 50,000 people in the provinces of Lombardy and Veneto.
[134][135][136] Hubei Government's press meeting on January 26 was described as the "scene of a massive car crash" by the BBC, which led to widespread dissatisfaction.
The food supply was steady, despite there having been a shortage in the early stages, and the local government promised to provide enough vegetables, rice and meat.
[170] On January 26, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said at a press conference that Hubei Province needed an estimated 3 million sets of protective clothing per month.
The ministry admitted that national production capacity was not meeting demand and promised that in addition to the central reserve, the state was also seeking to purchase overseas equipment such as protective clothing and face masks.
[182] On February 5, a 2000 square meter emergency detection laboratory named "Huo-Yan" (Chinese: 火眼, or "Fire Eye" in English) was opened by BGI,[182][183] which could process over 10,000 samples a day.
[185] Mathematical modelling has shown cases in Hubei would have been approximately 47% higher, and the corresponding cost of the tackling the quarantine would have doubled, had this testing capacity not been built.
[192] On January 24, 85 hotels in Wuhan formed a working group to provide rooms without central air conditioning for medical workers for free.
[204] Since the outbreak, several community managers were drafted to the front lines to help local residents with treatment and diagnosis oof the virus.
Most community clinics did not have enough equipment such as protective gear and diagnosis tools to deal with the tasks assigned by the government to conduct preliminary screening for hospitals.
