Two years since COVID-19 lockdown in Wuhan

A rainy Sunday marked the second anniversary of an unprecedented COVID-19 lockdown in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected.

23 January 2020 was the day that Chinese state media announced the city would be shutting down outbound flights and trains, in an attempt to halt the spread of a new virus that had killed 17 people and caused hundreds of others to fall ill. 

Since then, China has had a "zero-tolerance" policy of mass testing and similar city-scale lockdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19. Currently, three Chinese cities are under lockdown: Xi'an, Anyang and Tianjin, with twenty million people confined to their homes in early January.