People are leaving and entering Hubei province by foot through a bridge in Yangtze river despite the transport lockdown due to the novel coronavirus outbreak that has claimed over 200 lives.
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As per a report of Reuters, the bridge that connects Jiujiang in Jiangxi province and Hunggang in Hubei serves as escape route for 60 million people trapped in Wuhan and neighboring cities under lockdown.
The foot traffic at the bridge casts doubt over the effectiveness of the measure and poses concern to residents living outside the sealed off areas, said the report.
According to authorities, some residents are allowed to leave and enter the areas under lockdown only in special circumstances.
One of the residents feared these exceptions is putting the efforts to contain the virus that the World Health Organization now has termed a global emergency.
“Because there’s an … incubation period at play here, if they head out, for example, to cities in the north of China, then it’s highly possible they will infect those areas too,” Wu Minzhou, a 40-year-old business owner living in Jiangxi, told Reuters.
China’s National Health Commission confirmed that the some infected patients are asymptomatic, which means they do not show symptoms of coronavirus.
The asymptomatic patient can spread the disease making novel coronavirus difficult to contain.
