Wuhan coronavirus: From silent streets to packed pools

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Thousands can be seen packed together at a music festival

BBC

Thousands of people packed shoulder-to-shoulder with no face masks in sight, frolicking on rubber floats and cheering along to a music festival.

It’s not a very 2020 image, but it was the scene this weekend in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 first emerged late last year.

Pictures of partygoers at the Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park – looking very much removed from the outbreak that the rest of the world continues to battle – have now gone, well, viral.

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No masks, no social distancing for these partygoers

It’s worlds apart from the images that came out of Wuhan when it had the world’s first Covid-19 lockdown in January – a ghost town devoid of residents and vehicles.

The lockdown was lifted in April and there have been no domestically transmitted cases in Wuhan or Hubei province since mid-May.

A slow return to normal

Wuhan went into a then unprecedented lockdown on 23 January – at a time where the virus had killed 17 people and affected more than 400.

It was a week after China confirmed that human-to-human transmission of the virus had taken place, something not previously proven.

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