Wuhan gives nurses grateful sendoff

WUHAN, 7 April 2020:

Flags, flowers and music have sprung up in the recently desolate city of Wuhan to bid farewell to some of the health personnel who travelled across China to help with the coronavirus crisis.

Wuhan gave 100 nurses from the eastern province of Shandong, who were part of a group of more than 42,000 Chinese health workers who travelled to the city in late January and early February, a moving send-off yesterday.

The situation in the province of Hubei and its capital Wuhan has changed thanks to the collective effort of the medical community and the health workers who travelled to the affected region to assist when hospitals were at breaking point.

These efforts have meant that as of Sunday, the city registered zero local infections after almost 11 weeks of a quarantine – which is expected to be lifted tomorrow.

The fleet of nurses from Shandong posed for photos, received bouquets of flowers and waved Chinese flags at the steps of the hotel that hosted them during their stay in Wuhan.

Standing in front of a banner that read “All honours to say goodbye to the medical staff,” the nurses smiled as ballads played in the background.

“I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am sad to leave Wuhan and abandon those who have been my companions. But I am happy to return and see my children and my family,” said a nurse Yue.

“The people here have been fantastic and grateful. I am also proud of what we have done here, of the country and its people,” Yue says visibly moved at the send-off the nurses have been given.

Unsurprisingly the stories of doctors who travelled to Wuhan have been all over the local press.

As is the speedy construction of a provisional hospital in just 10 days, one of the “positive news stories” the population is regularly reminded of.

Local authorities dedicated a light show on the banks of the Yangtze and Hanjiang rivers to Yue and her companions – considered “heroes and heroines”.

The show aims to pay tribute to heroes – including medical workers, community workers, police officers and volunteers – who have made great contributions to the city, state news agency Xinhua said of the light show.

“Over the past months, we were touched by countless moments, and these should be engraved on our minds,” said the manager of the light show.

Hundreds of citizens flocked to the shops on Hanjie Avenue’s gigantic open-air shopping mall yesterday in scenes that would have been unimaginable just a week ago.

Things have changed since the coronavirus outbreak, and anyone who wants to enter must wear a face mask and go through a security checkpoint that verifies the state of health of visitors through an app.

This is the beginning of a softening of measures that as of April 8 will mean healthy residents will be able to leave the city for the first time in months.

Those who flocked to Hanjie were optimistic the tide was turning and said they felt confident normality, albeit little by little, was on the horizon for the city where 50,008 infections, of China’s total 81,708, and at least 2,571 Covid-19 deaths were registered.

Many in Hanjie yesterday were young people and families and although clothing and electronics stores were already open, most chose to order food or drinks at take-out restaurants.

“We came a couple of days ago, this is livening up. We are very happy to be out and about,” says a girl who is waiting outside a noodle shop for a waiter to bring her order, one of the most frequent measures to minimize human contact and contagion.

However, in the shopping centre of the Guanggu square, there is less of a crowd. “We just opened yesterday. Only one or two customers came. We are waiting for more to come here,” said a clothes-store assistant.

– EFE