Crowds fill streets in China's pandemic-hit Wuhan for New Year

Agencies | Wuhan

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Large crowds took to the streets at midnight on Friday in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, celebrating the arrival of 2021 after a year marred by a deadly pandemic that killed thousands there and required the city to be locked down between the end of January and early April.

As per tradition, hundreds gathered in front of the old Hankow Customs House building, one of the city’s more popular New Year’s Eve spots. When the building’s old clock reached midnight many people released balloons into the air, cheered and called out “happy new year”, said Reuters. 

The festivities came 12 months after the World Health Organization (WHO) said it first received word of cases of pneumonia of an unknown cause in Wuhan, which later became known as the world’s first outbreak of COVID-19.

 A team of WHO experts are scheduled to arrive in China in January 2021 to investigate the origins of the pandemic. Wuhan has been largely virus-free for months, and in recent days it has been vaccinating some specific groups of the local population. But a recent small rise in cases in various Chinese cities, including Beijing, has reminded people in Wuhan that the pandemic is not over yet.