In Wuhan, once Covid-19 ‘ground zero’, a new battle has begun

Since Covid-19 first emerged at a Wuhan wet market nearly 10 months ago, more than 1 million people have died and life has been irrevocably changed the world over. Healthcare services have been pushed to the brink, global unemployment has soared, and families torn apart. 

But back in Wuhan, once the “ground zero” of the pandemic, a new fight has emerged.  A group of citizens are now suing the government for what they say was the fatal decision to hide the true danger of the virus in its earliest days.  

On the surface, life in the city of 11 million people appears to be back to normal – shops are open and people are returning to work.  

But Yang Min is unable to forget what happened to her family when, in mid-January, she took her daughter to Wuhan city hospital for surgery.  

Little was then known about the disease – the local government even organised a public dinner attended by more than 10,000 people on 19 January. Everything seemed normal, she says.  

Her daughter then started to get feverish. Confused, the hospital tried various treatments before transferring her to two other hospitals. When Yang’s daughter arrived at the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, medical staff were able to take care of her, she says. Her daughter began to have difficulty breathing and drinking. She then started coughing up blood.  

Around the same time, the number of patients in Wuhan with serious pneumonia symptoms began to rise.  

On 1 February, more than two weeks after her daughter first showed symptoms, she was finally give a Covid-19 test and tested positive.

But Yang also started to show symptoms and was isolated from her daughter. Just five days later, and she was told her daughter had passed away. She was just 24-years-old.

“I believe the Wuhan City government intentionally concealed the scale of the pandemic from all of us,” Yang tells The Independent. “It’s because of them my daughter lost her life in such a short period of time.”

“If I don’t file a lawsuit against the government and the hospitals for causing my loss, my daughter can never rest in peace.”  

It wasn’t until 20 January, when tens of thousands were believed to already be infected, that China’s top infectious disease expert, Zhong Nanshan, finally admitted the virus could pass between humans.

Even though Wuhan went into a total lockdown three days later, many infected patients had left the city and brought the virus to other parts of the world. It has since spread to 188 countries and infected more than 32 million people. In Wuhan, where it all began, there are more than 50,000 confirmed cases and 3,869 deaths, a much lower death rate compared to major cities like New York or London.

In May, a group of more than 40 citizens in the city began to collect evidence for lawsuits against the government.

Yang Zhanqing, who helped to put together an advisory group, tells The Independent they hope the cases can help the citizens receive some kind of compensations.  

“When I was helping the victims of the 2008 Chinese milk scandal to get compensation from the government, we also began the process by filing lawsuits against the government,” Yang explains. “While the court never set up any case in the end, the lawsuits forced the government to reach out to the victim’s family members and offered some monetary compensation.”  

Zhang Hai was the first Wuhan citizen to file a lawsuit against the government. He lost his father after he began to show Covid-19 symptoms after receiving an orthopedic surgery at a hospital.  

“He started getting a fever on 23 January but the hospital waited until the 29th to test him for Covid-19,” Zhang tells The Independent. “His test came back positive and it was too late for him to get any treatment. He passed away two days later.”  

In the months spent collecting evidence for the lawsuit, Zhang he has been repeatedly threatened by the police and the government. Apart from being summoned to the police station for questioning several times, Zhang’s social media account was terminated five times. Fake accounts were set up and spread rumors that were aimed at smearing him and Yang.  

“I think the Wuhan City government is trying to stop other family members from filing lawsuits against them so they wanted to create a false impression that seeking legal advice from the group of volunteer lawyers will cost them 100,000 RMB, which is an amount that most of them couldn’t afford,” Zhang said.  

Eventually, Zhang filed his lawsuit against the Wuhan City government, the Hubei provincial governor and another hospital in Wuhan in June. However, he soon received a phone call from the Wuhan Intermediate Court, telling him that his lawsuit had been rejected because “it didn’t meet the criteria for setting up a case”. Zhang decided to file the lawsuit to the Hubei Higher People’s Court in August, but so far he hasn’t heard anything back.  

Yang Zhanqing said the Chinese government has refused to address the lawsuits filed by five Wuhan citizens so far while they continue to intimidate and threaten others from pursuing legal actions.

“They tried to call or visit citizens who had joined the private group on WeChat, asking them not to contact me,” Yang said. “In some cases, they even forced other family members to put pressure on them, hoping they will give up seeking justice for their dead family members if they think it might harm others.”  

Yang Min, who is still determined to seek justice for her daughter, says her main reason for suing is to find out what happened.  

“If I can’t even determine who is actually responsible for causing my daughter’s death, how can I ask for any compensation,” Yang said. “If they had not concealed the important facts in the very beginning, we wouldn’t have to go through months of total lockdown.”  

She doubts she will get answers any time soon.  

“I don’t expect I will be able to hold the government accountable for what they did to my daughter, but this will become my life-long mission.”