People in Wuhan are partying like it’s 2019.
The Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged just had an enormous and largely maskless pool party complete with packed crowds. China’s Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park held an electronic music festival with thousands of guests over the weekend. The revelers could be seen wearing bathing suits while crammed shoulder-to-shoulder inside the pools, cheering as music blasted.
The water park, which first reopened in June, has recently averaged about 15,000 guests per day on the weekends and has begun promoting discounts to lure residents, according to CNN.
VIDEO: ??Crowds packed out a water park over the weekend in the central Chinese city of #Wuhan, where the #coronavirus first emerged late last year, keen to party as the city edges back to normal life pic.twitter.com/sIrvzSFdin
— AFP news agency (@AFP) August 18, 2020
Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in the central part of the country, looked very different just a few months ago when it was the epicenter of the COVID-19 health crisis. The area is thought to have had its first victims to the virus late last year.
By Jan. 23, Wuhan had almost entirely sealed itself off from the rest of China and the world in an aggressive attempt to contain the coronavirus. Residents were told to remain indoors, and makeshift hospitals were constructed in mere days. Other cities in the country’s Hubei province initiated similar precautions.
While doubt has been cast about China’s official numbers, it has reported just under 90,000 confirmed cases and at least 4,704 deaths. More than half of those infections are sourced back to Wuhan. The city reported its last case of the coronavirus in mid-May.
President Trump and some U.S. officials have blasted China over the way it handled the start of the pandemic and have accused the country of downplaying the severity of the respiratory illness when it first emerged.
The U.S. still has numerous coronavirus restrictions in place as it still struggles to contain the virus. The U.S. has recorded 5.4 million cases and nearly 171,000 deaths since the pandemic began.
