Some disturbing reports have again started coming in from Wuhan, the Capital city of China’s Hubei province which had emerged as the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak not very long ago, that has today killed more than 59,000 people and infected no less than a million people worldwide.
The Wuhan virus originally traced its roots to the unsanitary wet markets in Central China where a number of wild species are placed in close vicinity of each other offer conditions that are ripe for viruses as deadly as this to emerge.
Now, what should worry the entire globe is the fact that while the Chinese authorities were claiming to have combated the novel Coronavirus completely, it seems that Wuhan is now battling a second wave of Coronavirus with local authorities recording a sudden rise in the number of asymptomatic patients.
Authorities in China’s Wuhan have reportedly asked residents to stay indoors, and avoid venturing out unless it is absolutely necessary. This shows that the authorities are worried about a rebound that may be even more severe than the previous one.
China had recently relaxed a nine-week long lockdown in Wuhan as the Dragon was desperate to kick-start its economy that took a hit after the Wuhan virus outbreak. This is also why the country went into an overdrive to export its faulty masks, ventilators and testing kits.
Not just ending lockdowns, China had also started reopening ‘wet markets’ selling bats and dogs, even as the world continues to pay the price for China’s unnatural dietary habits.
But now there has been a sudden surge in asymptomatic patients getting identified in China, raising suspicions about thousands of silent carriers returning to normal life without even knowing that they will be infecting others.
South China Morning Post, citing unpublished official documents, recently said that the number of these silent carriers was more than 40,000.
As of now, there are already 1,075 asymptomatic patients in China under medical observation- 742 cases being reported from Hubei alone. This too might be a conservative number given China’s tendencies of downplaying the real crisis.
Meanwhile, there are also reports of China planning to test all the 11 million people of Wuhan with sudden rise in asymptomatic patients being reported for since Wednesday.
What can make matters worse is that while public transportation has already been restored partially in Wuhan, the outbound travel restrictions are also set to be lifted by April 8, which would mean that many people travelling to other parts of China carrying the virus with them, often unknowingly and setting of a new chain that could ultimately set in a second wave of Coronavirus Pandemic around the world.
China still cannot get over its PR campaign though, as CCP mouthpiece Global Times has now started dismissing the rise in asymptomatic patients as “imported cases”.
China has been already facing a lot of outrage around the globe for the way it mismanaged the Coronavirus outbreak, hiding important data from the rest of the world.
Beijing understands that if its negligence now creates a second wave, then the outrage will get that much louder. Therefore, the embedded State media has already started passing off the silent carries as “imported cases”. Its PR campaign has started this time, even before the world gets slipped into the exacerbated crisis manufactured by the Chinese virus.
#Beijing detected a new imported #COVID19 case flying in from the #US, as the total imported cases reached 157 as of Satuary noon local time. https://t.co/0lWdF7W0Gt
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) March 28, 2020
China’s misadventures have already caused thousands of deaths starting from Iran and Italy, now even in Spain and the United States, among several other countries.
But it seems that Beijing’s eagerness to return to normalcy and kickstart its economy, as well as its unsanitary markets has set up the world for something far worse. The first wave was just a Pandemic, the second, if it goes beyond China, could easily be a full-blown apocalypse.