|
 Covering up was clearly the best decision for many of the passengers
waiting to board the packed train carriages for the 5-1/2 hour
journey to Wuhan, the epicenter of an outbreak that has sent shivers
through the world's most populous country.
Going back to her hometown, 28-year-old Tan Jie has been ribbed at
work about the danger of contracting the new coronavirus, but the
blue surgical mask on her face shows she is taking the risk
seriously.
"My Beijing colleagues joked and said 'when you come back to work,
we'll have to quarantine you for two weeks,'" Tan said, trying to
make light of the dampener the scare has put on the most important
holiday for Chinese families.
So far three people have died, and authorities globally have counted
more than 200 reported cases. On Monday, China confirmed the first
cases in the country outside Wuhan, in Beijing and the southern city
of Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong.
Liao Guang and her husband are looking forward to being reunited
with their two-year-old child in Yichang, a city in the same
province as Wuhan, and rushed to buy masks before traveling, as
alarm spread on social media after the number of confirmed cases
tripled over the weekend.
"All the trending items were about this pneumonia outbreak, so I
thought we should buy a mask and take some kind of a preventative
measure," said Liao, a petite 26-year-old, trailing a wheelie bag.
"I think during this (holiday), we're not going to go out too much,
and probably won't go to places with a lot of people, like the movie
theater."
BAREFACED SHAME
Little remains known about the virus, including its source, how
easily it can spread, or its severity, though some experts say it is
less deadly than the earlier Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
virus, which killed nearly 800 people in 37 countries after an
outbreak in southern China in 2002-2003.
Symptoms include fever and difficulty in breathing, like many other
respiratory diseases. While it is unclear whether masks provide
effective protection, for people with no other information they are
the most obvious precaution.
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Drug stores in Wuhan reported mask sales have surged.
"Today we've sold out all the single-use masks, and I need to
prepare for tomorrow's supply," said a worker at a branch of Beike
Drug Store. "Demand has surged ten times compared with before the
disease broke out."
Beijing has said the outbreak is controllable and vowed to step up
efforts to prevent its spread ahead of the holidays, which begin
late this week, when hundreds of millions of Chinese will be travel
domestically and abroad.
At Beijing West railway station the number of people wearing masks
was pretty well matched by those without anything covering their
faces, and there were no visible infrared temperature cameras for
detecting elevated body temperatures.
The outbreak, as well as disclosures from local governments about
patients under quarantine pending a confirmed diagnosis, were among
the top trending topics on social media platforms Monday. Some users
expressed anger at a lack of clear guidance from authorities on
precautions that could be taken.
"I have to search on Weibo by myself for all the new developments -
no notice from schools, companies or the compound where I live," one
user of Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, complained.
Another took aim as people going without masks for not taking the
outbreak seriously.
"So ignorant, so fearless, so arrogant," another user said.
(Reporting by Huizhong Wu, Sophie Yu, Lusha Zhang and Roxanne Liu;
writing by Se Young Lee; editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
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