After battling flu-like symptoms that included a fever for over a week, at around 7 p.m. (03:00 GMT) on Monday, Judy Liu and her boyfriend boarded a train from Wuhan, the epicenter of the new deadly coronavirus outbreak in China, to go to their hometown of Zaoyang, a city located about 150 miles to the northwest
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd January, 2020) After battling flu-like symptoms that included a fever for over a week, at around 7 p.m. (03:00 GMT) on Monday, Judy Liu and her boyfriend boarded a train from Wuhan, the epicenter of the new deadly coronavirus outbreak in China, to go to their hometown of Zaoyang, a city located about 150 miles to the northwest.
During Liu's visit to Wuhan Hospital No. 6 on Friday, doctors there had reassured her that her boyfriend did not have the new "mysterious virus," which is causing people to come down with pneumonia symptoms in the city. Following the visit, the young couple left for their hometown for what was supposed to be the most memorable holiday of their life, as they had planned to celebrate their wedding with their friends and relatives there.
After dating for more than a year and buying an apartment together in Wuhan, they decided to tie the knot during the Chinese New Year holidays later in the week.
"We went to the local civil affairs office in Wuhan at around 11 a.m. on January 20 to obtain our marriage certificate because that would allow my boyfriend to have three more days [of] vacation time for our wedding. We planned to hold our wedding ceremony on January 30 in our hometown where we could celebrate with family and friends," Liu told Sputnik during a phone interview on Thursday.
The young couple's plans for the perfect wedding were suddenly crushed when Liu's boyfriend's temperature skyrocketed again late on Tuesday, one day after they had arrived in their hometown. After they visited an emergency room at a local hospital in Zaoyang, doctors immediately ordered her boyfriend to be quarantined over the suspicion that he was infected with the new coronavirus, which has recently killed 17 people and made more than 600 people sick in China.
The reason behind the difference in the Wuhan doctors' decision to let Liu's boyfriend go and the Zaoyang medics' move to quarantine him was an order from senior Chinese leaders in Beijing. About twenty minutes after Liu and her boyfriend boarded the train leaving Wuhan, the official Xinhua news Agency released a directive from Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang instructing local officials in Wuhan to do their best to contain the deadly new coronavirus and prevent it from spreading further.
"The directive from Beijing was issued on the evening of January 20. But by the time we learned about it, we were already in our hometown. If I knew how serious the situation was, I would never have left Wuhan," Liu said.
According to Liu, she and her boyfriend both started to "catch a cold" and developed a fever around January 12. After hearing scattered reports about a mysterious new virus that was causing pneumonia symptoms, Liu decided to take her boyfriend, whose fever had persisted for days, to the Wuhan No. 6 hospital for further tests to make sure he was not infected.
"Maybe because there were not a lot of reports about the new virus at the time, only patients showing severe symptoms, such as breathing troubles, were being quarantined [at the hospital in Wuhan]. After doing CT scans and blood tests, the doctors reassured me many times that my boyfriend did not contract the new virus and just prescribed flu medicine like Oseltamivir," she said.
The local authorities in Wuhan first released a statement on a cluster of patients exhibiting pneumonia symptoms on December 31. The second related statement was released on January 3, when business owners at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan were identified as the first group of patients.
Liu's apartment in Wuhan is located about two miles away from the seafood market, which is believed to be the place where the new coronavirus originated. She worked in a company across the street from the market for two months last year.
"It was way before the current crisis started. But I thought the market must be one of the dirtiest places in Wuhan. There was sewage water everywhere. It is impossible to step your foot there. That's why we never go to that market despite living nearby," she said.
Since January 10, when the first death caused by the new "mysterious virus" was registered, the Wuhan authorities began to provide daily updates on the number of newly infected patients. China's National Health Commission shared the genome sequence of the new coronavirus with the World Health Organization on January 11.
In a statement released by the Wuhan Health Commission on the same day, unnamed experts were quoted as saying that there was no evidence of "human-to-human" transmission of the new virus. Eventually, about six hours after the directive from Beijing was released, local health authorities admitted on their official Weibo account that 15 doctors and nurses who treated the infected patients had also contracted the new virus, offering the first evidence of "human-to-human" transmission.
During the first three days after Xi's directive was released, the Chinese authorities put their efforts to contain the deadly coronavirus in high gear. Different provinces began to issue daily updates about the latest number of infected patients and people returning from Wuhan were quarantined if they exhibited flu-like symptoms. Wuhan's local authorities went as far as ordering a total lockdown of the city by 10 a.m. on Thursday, prohibiting all city residents from leaving.
But for Liu and her boyfriend, the impact of the local authorities' delayed response in containing the new coronavirus was much more than a ruined wedding.
Liu has not been able to see her boyfriend since he was quarantined on Tuesday, only staying in touch through text messages and video chats. As the local hospitals in Zaoyang have not offered food to patients, Liu has had to deliver meals to her boyfriend three times a day. However, she could only leave the food with security guards who would then pass it along to the nurses who are attending to all the quarantined patients.
"It has been three days and they still have not confirmed if my boyfriend has been infected with the new virus or not. They took his blood samples on the first evening that he was quarantined. Did Chinese experts not say that the new test toolkit issued by the authorities in Beijing could confirm the results of infection within a few hours?" Liu said.
As Liu has not exhibited flu-like symptoms, she has not yet been quarantined. But as someone who had close contact with her boyfriend, Liu has also decided to take precautions by staying away from her family and friends over the fear of infecting them.
"I have been paying 120 Yuan (about $17.3) a night to stay in a hotel close to the hospital where my boyfriend is. I cannot go to live with my parents now. I do not want to risk infecting them. I do not know how long I can live like this. If I knew the new virus was so serious, my boyfriend and I would definitely have stayed in Wuhan, where we at least have our own apartment to live in and the hospitals are better equipped," she said.
In addition to canceling all of her wedding arrangements, Liu does not even plan to meet any of her relatives during the Chinese New Year holidays.
"If I am cleared after 14 days, maybe I will go stay with my parents. But I just want to know if my boyfriend is infected or not. They are sending suspected new patients every day to the same place where he is being quarantined. If he is not infected, would he not be infected by staying in the same rooms where others could be infected?" she said.
According to Liu, more than ten new suspected patients have been sent to the same area where her boyfriend is being quarantined in the local hospital in Zaoyang.
Liu and her boyfriend were supposed to return to Wuhan for work by February 1, when the New Year holidays end in China. But with Wuhan under lockdown and Liu not knowing whether her boyfriend was infected by the new virus, she does not know what to expect by then.
As for her new wedding date, Liu said that it has not crossed her mind as she was so focused on the hopes of the current epidemic being over soon.
