(Minghui.org) A woman with flu-like symptoms left the virus-ravaged Wuhan City despite the lockdown. She was confirmed to have the coronavirus two days after she arrived in Beijing and is now under quarantine.
The woman, surnamed Huang, is a former employee of the Xuan’en County Water Resource Bureau in Hubei Province. She was released on February 18, 2020 from Wuhan Women’s Prison after serving a ten-year term for taking bribes.
It was reported that more than 300 inmates in the prison have been infected with the novel coronavirus, and Huang is one of them.
According to a Chinese media, Caixin, Huang was having intermittent fevers and throat discomfort when she was released. She left Wuhan in her family’s private car and arrived in her daughter's home in Beijing at 2 a.m. on February 22.
She went to the hospital for the fever on February 23 and tested positive for the virus on the next day. She was then sent to a quarantine center.
On the same day when Huang went to the hospital, Xi Jinping, the head of the Chinese Communist Party, said during an internal conference that local officials should enforce the travel restrictions to prevent people from entering Beijing from other cities. All who come in and out of Beijing should receive close monitoring of their health status.
With Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic, still on lockdown, many people questioned how Huang could pass so many checkpoints and travel more than 700 miles from Wuhan to Beijing. Some speculate that she may have connections with high-ranking officials and that the dissemination of the news about her travel may have been a result of infighting in the central government.