Hubei lockdown lifted, but exodus from Chinese city hindered by new COVID-19 swab test rule

XIANNING, Hubei: Residents of China's Xianning city eager to travel after a two-month lockdown faced an unexpected hurdle only hours after the borders were opened – they needed to pass a new rapid detection test to show they didn't have the coronavirus.

Dozens rushed to the city's largest hospital but were told the hospital was no longer doing the nucleic acid tests and were advised to try hospitals in nearby villages or towns.

The test uses genetic material from throat swabs and normally takes a few hours for a result.

"If we can't get the nucleic acid test how can we leave? I can't get on the train, I've bought my ticket but I cant leave," Shen Jianning, 51, said on Thursday (Mar 26) morning.

Shen, who wants to return to his job on a metro construction project in Shanghai, rushed to Xianning Central Hospital at around 4am on Thursday in hopes of getting a nucleic acid test, but was told by doctors there that they no longer were doing the tests and he had to find an alternative.

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Signs pasted on glass doors of the hospital, the city's largest, said people should go to village or town hospitals to get the tests done.

Xianning announced the test requirement on its official WeChat account on Wednesday, the day Hubei province, epicentre of China's coronavirus outbreak and home to 60 million people, removed much of its lockdown transport measures.

The lifting of the Hubei lockdown is a major milestone in the fight against the coronavirus in China. More than 80 per cent of COVID-19 cases and 96 per cent of deaths in mainland China have been in Hubei.

The provincial capital Wuhan, where the virus first appeared late last year and which has had 54 per cent of cases, remains under lockdown until Apr 8.

People wearing face masks line up outside Xianning Central Hospital in Xianning, after the lockdown was eased in Hubei province, the epicentre of China's coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak on Mar 26, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Aly Song)

The order to use the rapid-detection test came after news that a man who had travelled from the city last week had later tested positive when he returned to work in Guangdong province.

The lifting of the lockdown has been accompanied by both relief and worry, with several people in Xianning telling Reuters they were unnerved by the case of the man who had travelled to Guangdong.

"My Shanghai boss has called me a few times asking me to get out as soon as possible. He even prepared the proof of work resumption for me. He told me what processes you need to do we will help you, just think of a way to get out," Shen said.

Shen, from the eastern province of Jiangsu, had been trapped in Xianning after travelling to the city to see a house he had bought there.

STUCK, INSIDE OR OUT

Millions of people were caught in Hubei or stuck outside it as China imposed draconian measures to curb the spread of coronavirus, an approach that has proven effective, with reported new domestically transmitted cases falling to zero on most recent days, even as imported cases persist.

On Thursday morning, about 30 people queued outside Xianning Central Hospital, all of them required to complete a form declaring whether they had recently come back from overseas or been in any high risk areas.