What do cities have to consider when preparing for a lockdown?

For the lockdown in Wuhan at community level, or the internal lockdown, the need for enforcement officers and service providers would be exponentially higher than a municipal level lockdown. In communities in Wuhan, to make sure of food supply, army force and street level bureaucrats were mobilised to arrange food rationing and delivery to the entrance of the communities. Government officials, volunteers and community security guards were placed at the entrance of all the communities and public spaces and shops to enforce the rules.

The lockdown policy has been enforced for almost two months. In fact, it was not so strictly implemented in the first 3-4 days particularly in the first 8 hours immediately after the announcement of the lockdown. In Wuhan the lockdown was announced at 2 am on 23rd January and the actual implementation was at 10 am with an eight-hour gap in between. Some interviews suggest that the eight-hour gap allowed 300 thousand people left the city before the lockdown. Some experts labelled this practice as compromised implementation.

These considerations are by no means all. We will continue to discuss other factors in the future Q&As. What Wuhan has done is unprecedented. Many lessons can be learnt from this experience. How to build a city and labour force that can protect the population from the most unexpected disasters is a topic not only for Chinese cities, but also for other cities around the world.