Crowds fill streets in Wuhan, China to celebrate New Year

by Zaid Aleem

According to CNN, crowds in massive numbers took to the streets in the central Chinese town of Wuhan at midnight on Friday, celebrating the arrival of 2021. The celebration took place after a year marred by a deadly pandemic that killed thousands in the country and forced the town to be locked down between the end of January and the beginning of April.

Hundreds of people gathered as per tradition, in front of the old Hankow Customs House building, one of the most famous New Year’s Eve spots in the region. When the old clock of the building reached midnight, many people released balloons into the air, cheered and called out “Happy New Year.”

A strong police presence and tight monitoring of the crowd continued for most of the night. Many security officers were seen telling the few people without masks that if they wanted to stay, they would have to put one on. It was overall a comfortable environment and the countdown seemed to continue peacefully.

The celebrations came 12 months after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it had first learned of cases of pneumonia of an unexplained origin in Wuhan, which later became known as the first COVID-19 epidemic in the world. 

In January 2021, a team of WHO experts is expected to arrive in China to study the source of the pandemic.

Wuhan has been relatively free from viruses for months, though several particular classes of the local population have been vaccinated in recent days. However, a recent slight uptick in cases in different Chinese cities, including Beijing, has reminded people in Wuhan that the pandemic is not yet over.

China approved its first homegrown coronavirus vaccine for general public use on Thursday, with officials promising to provide the general public with free inoculations, according to this CNN report. The approval comes a day after its manufacturer, state-owned pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm, said the vaccine is 79.34 percent effective, citing interim analysis of Phase 3 clinical trials.