“We won’t have a New Year celebration tonight. There’s no mood for it,” said Wu Qiang, a middle-aged Wuhan resident waiting outside a hospital for word about his son, who had a fever. “I think he’s O.K., but now even an ordinary sneeze makes you worry. You start to think every cough or sneeze might be the virus.”
For many families in Wuhan, the Lunar New Year holiday now promises to be a week of anxious waiting — for medical resources and clarity about when they will be free of the virus and able to travel.
“The government announced there were thousands of beds, but everywhere is crammed with people,” said Xiao Hongxia, a Wuhan resident who said that her father, Xiao Shibing, was not getting full care for what might be illness from the virus. At one hospital, she said, “the doctors were crying that they were helpless to do anything.”
Twenty-nine of China’s 31 provinces and regions have confirmed cases, and two deaths have occurred far from the outbreak’s epicenter, one of them nearly 1,500 miles away. Cases have also been detected in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Nepal, Taiwan and the United States.
Officials at Shanghai Disneyland, one of the biggest tourist attractions in China, and at the Badaling section of the Great Wall of China, a popular tourist destination north of Beijing, said they would temporarily close beginning Saturday.
Beijing canceled public events, including two popular temple fairs, and closed the Forbidden City, the capital’s most famous tourist attraction, until further notice. Many cities shuttered movie theaters, bars and cafes in an effort to limit the spread of the virus.
Source : Nytimes
