Life Under Lockdown: Healthy People In China's Wuhan Desperate To Return To Work

Leo Yang, a 27-year-old Chinese software engineer, and his wife are struggling to pay their bills and fear that they might lose their jobs in the city of Huizhou, as they have been unable to leave the city of Wuhan, which has been on lockdown due to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), for almost 50 days, despite not being infected

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 05th March, 2020) Leo Yang, a 27-year-old Chinese software engineer, and his wife are struggling to pay their bills and fear that they might lose their jobs in the city of Huizhou, as they have been unable to leave the city of Wuhan, which has been on lockdown due to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), for almost 50 days, despite not being infected.

Because the young couple works 600 miles southeast of Wuhan, the Chinese New Year's holidays were the only time that they could visit their two young children, aged three and five, who are being raised by Yang's parents there. So Yang and his wife arrived in Wuhan on January 16.

However, what was supposed to be a happy holiday of family reunion turned into a lingering nightmare for Yang and his family.

After a cluster of patients exhibiting pneumonia-like symptoms was discovered at a local seafood market in Wuhan in late December, a new strain of the coronavirus was found to be causing the sickness. The coronavirus disease quickly spread not only in Wuhan but also to other cities in China, and eventually began to reach other countries.

As of Thursday, the new coronavirus has killed over 3,200 people and infected over 95,000 globally.

After waiting for more than 20 days before declaring the new coronavirus a public health emergency, the Chinese authorities took swift actions to contain the deadly virus beginning on January 20. The city of Wuhan and most of the other cities in the Hubei province were put under complete lockdown on January 23. All public transportation leaving Wuhan was shut down and no one was allowed to move in and out of the city without permission from the authorities. Local residents were also encouraged to stay at home as much as possible to avoid being infected by others who had contracted the new virus.

The harsh quarantine and containment measures appeared to have prevented the infection of a large number of people in other Chinese cities outside of the Hubei province, as the number of newly confirmed cases in those cities began to drop sharply beginning in early February. The number of new infections in Wuhan also stayed around 500 daily over the past two weeks, which is a sharp drop from the first few weeks of the outbreak, when thousands of new cases were added each day. As of Thursday, 49,671 people have contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan.

Yang and his family members were among the lucky ones who were not infected by the new coronavirus. However, the complete lockdown of Wuhan has presented a new challenge for healthy people in the city like Yang how to continue with their life without any income, as they cannot yet return to work.

"The last salary I received was before I left Huizhou in January. I have already maxed out my credit cards and could not even pay back the bills. And I still have to pay about 7000 Yuan (about $1000) every month for my mortgage and monthly loan payment for my car. I do not know where I will get money to buy milk powder for my children next week," Yang told Sputnik during a phone interview on Thursday.

Yang and his wife are the only providers for the family because the man's parents were farmers and could not collect any pension from the government despite being at retirement age. When the young couple worked in Huizhou, they sent money back to their parents every month for them to take care of their young children in Wuhan.

"Today is the 47th day after I returned to Wuhan. If my wife and I can not go back to work soon, my family will not die because of the new coronavirus, but will die of starvation," Yang said.

The Chinese authorities have encouraged employers to allow their staff members to work from home, after many cities were put under lockdown to contain the deadly coronavirus disease.

However, Yang said that the nature of his job did not allow him to work remotely.

"My job is to test the software on a tablet issued by my company in the office. If I do not have the tablet in my hands, how can I do my job? My boss would simply assign the task to someone else," he said.

Yang said he was worried that he could lose his job if he cannot get back to work soon.

"My boss probably will not fire me while the epidemic is still ongoing, because that would damage the reputation of the company. But once the epidemic is over, he could still fire me for not working for months. It is a competitive market. There is always someone waiting to do my job," he said.

A Wuhan official said during an interview with the official China Central Television on Monday that people who are not from Wuhan but happened to be stranded in the city during the lockdown were eligible to apply for 3,000 yuan of temporary financial support from the government.

However, Yang said such special financial support was not available to someone like him, who has a home in the city.

"The money is only for those who became homeless in Wuhan during the lockdown, because they came from another city," he said.

Yang added that officials in his community did not mention any plans to provide financial support for people stuck in Wuhan like him.

"I have always read news about different cities donating food and vegetables to Wuhan. But I have not seen a grain of rice or a piece of a vegetable being distributed in my community," he said.

The young father said that he would try to ask the grocery store owner next week to allow him to buy some basic life supplies such as milk powder for his children and food without paying right away.

"I am not sure if he will agree. He may just say that he also needs the money for new products in his store. Everyone can only rely on themselves," he said.

While understanding how deadly the new virus is and how important the quarantine measures are in controlling the outbreak, Yang expressed hope that the Chinese authorities would be more flexible in allowing people who have not contracted COVID-19 like him in Wuhan to have a chance to continue with their lives.

"On the global stage, the government sent planes to take the Chinese stranded in other countries back home. But why can you not allow some healthy people trapped in Wuhan to leave? People in Wuhan are not human beings? Do you really have to choke everyone in Wuhan like this?" he said.

The desperate software engineer first saw a sign of hope when the local authorities in Wuhan first issued a directive on January 24 allowing people stranded in Wuhan to obtain permission to leave the city. However, the directive was revoked three hours after it was issued, as another directive said that senior officials in the city had not approved the earlier decision to allow some people to leave.

Yang argued that allowing healthy people like him to leave the city would not bring the virus to other cities.

"I have obtained a certificate from the local hospital stating that I have not been infected. As public transportation is still shut down, I will drive my car with my wife to Huizhou where local authorities have prepared special hotels to quarantine newly arrived people for 14 days," he said.

Yang added that the sooner he could get back to Huizhou, the sooner he could go back to work after being quarantined upon arrival.