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Chinese villages are cutting themselves off from the world with makeshift brick walls to try and stop outsiders giving them Wuhan virus

Jan 28, 2020, 15:58 IST
  • Chinese villages are cutting themselves off from the world to prevent the deadly Wuhan coronavirus from taking hold in their communities.
  • Sky News documented six villages in Hubei, about 600 miles from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, who had taken defensive measures.
  • Some erected tall brick walls to block roads, signs saying "No outsiders allowed in."
  • One village had winched in a cabin to serve as a guardhouse at a checkpoint.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Villages in central China are going to extreme measures to cut themselves off from the deadly Wuhan coronavirus.

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Images broadcast by Sky News, featuring the network's Asia correspondent Tom Cheshire, documented isolation attempts by six villages in the province of Hubei.

Wuhan, where the virus originated, is in the Hubei province, but around 600 miles from the villages visited by Sky.

The virus, known as 2019-nCoV, broke out in Wuhan in early January and, as of Tuesday, has killed 106 people, infected 4,500, and spread to 14 other countries, China's National Health Commission said.

Handwritten signs suspended over roads into some villages visited by Sky News warned: "No outsiders allowed in."

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"Our village built this," one villager told Sky News, referring to a tall brick wall across a main road. The villager said the wall was "to stop outsiders coming to our village, to reduce the number of people coming in."

In one case a portable cabin was winched into a village in Hubei to act as a guardhouse at a checkpoint. A local resident Sky News identified as Yan Yang said: "It's because of the epidemic. I don't know how long it will last."

"No one knows how the epidemic will process. There's no policies from the top yet."

"I can't say I'm not worried. But no one has another method," he told Sky News.

While the Chinese government has set up official checkpoints to screen people for the virus, these walls and barriers have been set up without the directive of the government, according to Sky News.

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Another image of people building a wall across a main road circulated on Chinese language social media on Tuesday, and spread to Twitter.

Business Insider has not been able to independently verify the photo from social media.

China's neighbor Mongolia enforced a ban on people crossing the border from China on Tuesday, according to the country's Montsame state news agency.

The World Health Organization convened an emergency meeting with Wuhan officials on Monday, but said last week it was too early to call the outbreak a global health emergency.

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