‘Don’t panic’ universities advise students in China coronavirus lockdown
- Hundreds of international students remain on Wuhan’s campuses as the city struggles to contain the deadly virus
- Most are staying in their dorms and waiting for news but rumours of food shortages on campus are ‘untrue’
For Wuhan’s several thousand international students, the Lunar New Year is tense, despite one university telling them: “Please don’t panic.”
While most have returned to their home countries for the break, those left on Wuhan’s empty university campuses – estimated to number in the hundreds – have shut themselves in their bedrooms where they navigate between the latest rumours and the concerns of their relatives.
Those who had already left the city – in lockdown since Thursday because of China’s infectious coronavirus – are weighing up whether to return when classes resume.
Authorities in Wuhan on Thursday cancelled buses, flights and trains in and out of the city as they battled to contain the spread of the deadly virus over the new year holiday this weekend, traditionally a time of mass travel.
Wuhan’s population of 11 million includes several thousand foreign students, attracted by generous state scholarships and the strong reputation in science subjects held by several of its universities.
But the grounds of Wuhan University, a sprawling lakeside campus with about 2,000 international students, were already largely deserted after most of them, along with the university’s 50,000 Chinese students, headed home at the end of term earlier this month.