While a lot has been written about the Chinese government’s response to the epidemic, our understanding of the human cost and social impact of the epidemic has just begun. The total number of Covid-19 infection cases recorded in the city stood at 50,333, with 3,869 deaths, as of April 17, 2020. This extreme measure was “unprecedented” in world public health history. Figure 1: Cover of Guo Jing’s Wuhan Lockdown Diary.įor seventy-seven days from January 23 to April 8, Wuhan, a Chinese city with a population of eleven million people, was locked down to contain the spread of the coronavirus.