China’s decision to lock down Wuhan may have prevented 700,000 new cases of coronavirus, experts have said, although sceptics have voiced doubts about the accuracy of Chinese figures.
A paper published by researchers in China, Britain and the US praised Beijing for the ‘successful’ quarantine measures which saw Wuhan virtually cut off.
‘China’s control measures appear to have worked by successfully breaking the chain of transmission – preventing contact between infectious and susceptible people,’ said an Oxford fellow who co-wrote the paper.
However, activists in China claim that Wuhan funeral homes are handing out 500 urns a day each, more than necessary for the 2,548 people who have officially died of the virus there.
Long queues at the funeral homes have fuelled scepticism about China’s numbers, prompting claims that 42,000 people or more could have died in Wuhan.
People wearing protective suits and face masks carry a box containing the ashes of someone who was cremated, near a funeral home in Wuhan today
The researchers, who published their paper in the journal Science, said China’s drastic control measures in the first 50 days of the epidemic bought valuable time for other cities to prepare.
By day 50 of the epidemic – February 19 – there were 30,000 confirmed cases in China, said Oxford fellow Christopher Dye, one of the paper’s authors.
‘Our analysis suggests that without the Wuhan travel ban and the national emergency response there would have been more than 700,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases outside of Wuhan by that date,’ he said.
The researchers used a combination of case reports, public health information and mobile phone location tracking to investigate the spread of the virus.
The phone tracking provided a ‘fascinating’ new stream of data, said another of the report’s authors, Penn State biology professor Ottar Bjornstad.
A man carrying cremation ashes gets into a car near a funeral home in Wuhan today, where lockdown restrictions are being lifted
The researchers ‘were able to compare patterns of travel into and out of Wuhan during the outbreak with cell phone data from two previous spring festivals,’ Bjornstad said.
The time period they studied encompassed China’s biggest holiday, the Lunar New Year.
‘The analysis revealed an extraordinary reduction in movement following the travel ban of January 23, 2020,’ Bjornstad said.
‘Based on this data, we could also calculate the likely reduction in Wuhan-associated cases in other cities across China.’
The Wuhan shutdown delayed the arrival of the virus in other cities, their model showed, giving them time to prepare by banning public gatherings and closing entertainment venues.
A worker in a protective outfit checks the body temperature of an elderly woman at the entrance of a bank in Wuhan yesterday
China’s lockdown was once seen as unthinkable in Western democracies, but has since been emulated across most of Europe.
The official count of cases in Wuhan has slowed to a trickle. Yesterday the Chinese government reported no new infections at all in Hubei province, and lockdown restrictions are being lifted.
In total, the National Health Commission has reported 2,548 deaths in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged late in 2019.
However, activists say that a series of Wuhan funeral homes have been handing out 500 urns a day each, far more than necessary to cover 2,548 deaths.
One activist, Jennifer Zeng, has suggested that Wuhan’s death toll could be as high as 59,000, far higher than any country. Others have offered a figure of 42,000.
In Britain, Cabinet minister Michael Gove says China had not been clear enough about ‘the scale, the nature, the infectiousness of this’.
Boris Johnson was reportedly told by officials that China’s total infection count could be as much as 40 times higher than Beijing’s figures suggest.