CORONAVIRUS: The Situation in China

NDM Founding Director Glan Clayton has been sending The NDM Hub monthly updates from his home in Jiaxing, China. However, due to how the Coronavirus pandemic has escalated in the UK, we contacted him to find out if life was back to normal in the East…
Everything in our city of Jiaxing, and most cities in China, are now OK. It is possible that the Chinese government’s response was a little slow (cover up?) to start with, but once they grasped it then it has been phenomenal. However, the UK has not isolated any worst affected parts of the country, so there are no spare resources to bring in, as the whole country is affected.
“The difference between China and the UK is that the worst area was isolated, meaning that resources from other areas could be used, with obvious precautions!”
Is China Back to Normal?
Over here we are pretty well over it; the only concern is stopping tourists re-introducing it, so they have to isolate for 14 days before they can go about their business. That means a one week trip becomes a three week trip with the first two weeks in a hotel or a Chinese isolation centre (not recommended). However, we still we have US customers coming!
I believe there are no virus chances in our city of Jiaxing. We only had 45 cases out of 4 million people with it and the last case was three weeks ago. There have been no deaths. All shops are now open including shopping malls and restaurants. I can finally go for massages three times a week without any qualms.
However, we are still not totally back to normal; everyone seems to have a temperature gun, no visitors are allowed to our complex and schools are still shut. Everyone wears a mask even though they are no use. 2,5 micron holes in the mask and a one micron sized virus!
Over By June
I think the most hopeful fact is that the virus seems to have a two to three month lifespan, judging by experience here, in South Korea and Japan. I kind of feel that if this is true, the UK may be over the worst by June. At the moment I cannot get back to the UK by the end of May as KLM have grounded 90% of their fleet. I think the travel restrictions are worse than anything for economic wellbeing.
Also, look at the stats. I expect the number of cases is lower than reported in China, simply because some people have no symptoms. Nevertheless, deaths are deaths: 3000 deaths out of 1.4 billion people.
Let’s see what the next couple of weeks bring!
Previous Updates From China:
2nd March: Update From the East
5th February: Coronavirus From the Front Line