WUHAN: With long lines of cars streaming through expressway tollgates and masked passengers boarding trains, the megacity of Wuhan in central China lifted outbound travel restrictions on Wednesday after almost 11 weeks of lockdown, imposed to stem the COVID-19 outbreak.
The day was marked with much sentiment after Wuhan turned the tide against the aggressive virus, which has infected over 50,000 people and killed 2,572 in the city, accounting for over half of the national total.
In front of the Fuhe tollgate in northern Wuhan, workers shouted countdowns as they pulled aside barricades at midnight and drivers, lining up more than 1 km, honked their horns in unison as they rushed through.
Big data from Wuhan traffic police forecasted the expressways would see a peak of outbound vehicles on Wednesday.
At Wuchang Railway Station, a total of 442 passengers jumped on the train K81, which departed shortly after midnight for Guangzhou, capital of south China’s Guangdong Province.
More than 55,000 passengers are expected to leave Wuhan by train on Wednesday, and about 40 percent of them are going to the Pearl River Delta region, a manufacturing heartland in southern China. A total of 276 passenger trains will leave Wuhan for Shanghai, Shenzhen and other cities.
Railway authorities have required passengers to present health codes and have their temperatures checked when entering the stations and wear masks to reduce the risks of infection. Workers disinfected trains, the entrances and exits, waiting halls and platforms of the railway stations in advance.
“We have carried out daily maintenance and disinfection of bullet trains in the past two months to prepare for the day when we resume operation,” said an employee of China Railway Wuhan Bureau Group Co., Ltd. (Agencies)
