China is increasing its efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak by implementing travel restrictions on 33 million people.
Transportation has been shut down in the province of Hubei, which includes the city of Wuhan, where the initial outbreak in Wuhan occurred. The province also has shut down hotels, large supermarkets, and farmers’ markets, according to NBC News.
“We must resolutely curb the spread of the epidemic to other places,” Provincial Governor Wang Xiaodong said. “This is a major responsibility that we must take. As a big city with more than 10 million people and a major transport hub of the country, Wuhan sees large population flow during the Spring Festival holiday, whereby poses great risks to the spread of the epidemic.”
Xiaodong said the situation has “entered a critical stage.” In addition to its travel restrictions, China is building a 1,000-bed and 270,000-square foot hospital to house those affected by the outbreak. Despite its most recent efforts, some have accused the communist regime of being too slow to respond to the crisis.
“The Chinese Communist Party has once again been caught red-handed covering up, suppressing, and censoring a serious public health risk, which could increasingly be a global public health risk,” Sen. Tom Cotton said Wednesday about the country’s efforts to contain the virus. “For weeks, China did not come clean about the coronavirus that they first said was only being passed from animals to humans in a seafood market in Wuhan in China.”
So far, 26 people have died from the virus and there have been 830 confirmed cases, but only one so far in the United States. The World Health Organization has said it is too early to declare the outbreak a public health emergency.
