How China turned the tide with coronavirus
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There are now significantly more new cases of coronavirus outside China than inside. On the first day of this week there were only 44 new cases in the whole country. Just a few weeks ago that figure was in the thousands.
While the authorities have been criticised for their initial slow response to the outbreak, allowing it to spread quickly, since January they have taken unprecedented action to clamp down on the spread of the virus. Whole cities have been put into quarantine and travel restrictions have been imposed on millions of people. New hospitals have been built with lightning speed and huge amounts of money has been spent on testing kits and other technology to fight Covid-19.
China has been accused of infringing civil liberties in its fight against Coronavirus but it has also been praised for the extreme public health measures it has taken. So what did the Chinese actually do and can it be replicated elsewhere?
Presenter: Tanya Beckett Producer: John Murphy
(Photo: A man talks through a barricade wall built to control entry and exit to a residential compound in Wuhan, Hubei province, China.Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, we've had a problem here. |
| 0:02.0 | 13 minutes to the moon, season two. |
| 0:05.0 | We were not confident, we were going to get the crew back. |
| 0:07.0 | Episode one, available now. |
| 0:10.0 | Welcome to the inquiry on the BBC World Service. I'm Tanya Beckett. Each week one question, |
| 0:17.7 | four expert witnesses and an answer. On December 30th, 2019, Ophthalmologist Li Wen Yang sent a message to a group of fellow doctors in the city of |
| 0:36.0 | Wuhan in Hube province in China. |
| 0:39.4 | He wanted to warn them about an outbreak of a flu-like illness he'd noticed among his patients. |
| 0:45.0 | Days later he was summoned to the Public Security Bureau in Wuhan |
| 0:50.0 | and forced to confess to making false statements. |
| 0:55.0 | Then he returned to work, |
| 0:57.0 | and soon the truth of his warning became clear to everyone. |
| 1:05.0 | They've now been over 80,000 cases in China with more than 3,000 deaths, |
| 1:11.0 | including Dr. Lee, who died on the 7th of February after having been |
| 1:16.0 | infected with the coronavirus while treating patients. |
| 1:20.8 | Lee became a symbol of the initial refusal of the Chinese authorities to face up to the seriousness of the outbreak. |
| 1:31.0 | But since then China has taken drastic action to stop the spread of COVID-19, |
| 1:37.0 | reducing the rate of new infections from thousands every day to fewer than 30. Now that the rest of the world is struggling with |
| 1:48.1 | growing numbers of cases in this week's inquiry we ask how did the Chinese turn the tide of the coronavirus epidemic? Part 1, the lockdown. |
| 2:05.0 | The Lockdown. |
| 2:07.0 | I read some novels also me and my parents play Chinese poker for like at least |
| 2:20.3 | one hour every day. Our first witness is Estelle Jaal, a news assistant in her |
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