According to Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang, 5 million people were able to leave the city before a recent quarantine was imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus. There are currently about 9 million people who remain in the city under lockdown, according to the mayor.
This is not the only indication that the spread of the illness could be far worse than imagined. Over the weekend, China’s President Xi Jinping finally admitted that the country is facing a “grave” situation,
In an unconfirmed video that has been widely reported in the global media this week, a masked woman claiming to be a nurse working in a Wuhan hospital says that the number of people infected is likely closer to 90,000, and that the official numbers are being under-reported.
The low estimations from official government sources in China have been a subject of suspicion since the outbreak began, but few estimations have been as high as 90,000. There have been a variety of different hoax videos and articles related to this issue in recent days, and it is not clear if this video is one of them, but the number of people infected is likely far higher than the figure of just over 1,000 that authorities are willing to admit.
In fact, the scale of the virus must be significantly higher than officially recognized because the scale of the current quarantine is so large and unprecedented that it would take a truly dangerous threat to provoke such a response. The quarantine has now extended beyond Wuhan into 12 more cities, affecting 35 million people.
Howard Markel, professor, and director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, told CNN that the shutdown of Wuhan was an unprecedented measure.
“I’ve never seen an entire city 11.4 million people cordoned off like that. I thought I’d seen everything,” Markel said.
Extreme measures are being taken by authorities, as the videos below claim to show, people suspected of being infected with the coronavirus are being transported in clear plastic boxes and tubes.
https://twitter.com/MissXQ/status/1220226081632014336
- MissXQ
https://twitter.com/RFA_Chinese/status/1219536974362472450
- RFA_Chinese
The infectious respiratory illness is a new strain of coronavirus, which causes a type of pneumonia. Some experts have compared it to Sars, because that was also a coronavirus. Scientists have examined the genetic code of the new virus and have found that it is more closely related to Sars than any other human coronavirus.
Health experts are concerned that the illness could spread even further in the coming weeks, as millions of Chinese citizens prepare to travel for the Lunar New Year holidays. Researchers believe that they were able to trace the outbreak to a seafood market in China, but scientists have not been able to figure out exactly how it is spreading. Still, at this point, scientists are sure that the illness is being passed from person to person, even if it did originate with some kind of animal.
Residents of the affected areas are being advised to avoid “unprotected” contact with live animals. They are also being advised to thoroughly cook any meat and eggs, and avoid close contact with anyone who has cold or flu-like symptoms