[Reporter] Wuhan's garment district is abuzz.
Carts jostle and deals are made.
Stores are stocked.
Meals are served.
At first glance here, COVID has been conquered.
Living and making a living seems easy again.
Adventure into the back lanes where seamstresses work
for a few dollars a day
and you'll see the stitching is a little slower.
The customers, fewer.
Too many of the stores Hu Weiyong rents out
sit empty.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter translates] Since the lockdown, he says
Wuhan seems like a dead city to me.
It's like we pressed the pause button.
We're very afraid.
Still living in the shadow of COVID.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter] The scars of this scare
are never far from the surface.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter translates] Making money doesn't seem as important anymore
says Lu Lihua.
Just living is the priority.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter] This central Chinese city
was the first to feel the full consequences of COVID
after the virus was discovered here in January.
A metropolis of more than 10 million on the Yangtze River
shut down and cut off from the world
in a matter of hours.
Many in Wuhan look back on the lockdown
as a nightmare.
Though now, few dare criticize it publicly.
There are stories of people feeling imprisoned in their own homes.
Sometimes quite literally with the doors welded shut.
They talk about shortages of food and medical care
and a serious lack of reliable information.
As the rest of China was preparing to celebrate Lunar New Year
the orders to lock down came from Beijing.
Within hours, people were ordered into their homes.
Police rounded up residents suspected to be sick.
At the time, it all seemed so draconian.
The kind of thing
only a dictatorship like China might do.
But there was reason to panic.
The deadly virus
apparently spreading from stalls at the city's seafood market
was taking its toll.
Bodies were collected from apartments all over the city.
A grim count of corpses piled up outside Wuhan's hospitals.
Inside, there was plenty of grief at the bedside.
[Man speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter translates] My father, he says, he's gone.
He stopped breathing.
[Reporter] Hospitals were in disarray.
Patients parked in hallways.
Shortages of doctors, beds and equipment.
It didn't have to be quite so frantic.
As early as December
one month before, a Wuhan doctor alerted his colleagues
to a strange new disease infecting patients.
But Dr. Li Wenliang was silenced by police.
He later died from COVID
becoming a popular hero as whistleblower.
Today, Wuhan's seafood market
considered by many as ground zero for this pandemic
is closed.
Decorated outside.
Abandoned on the inside.
But around here, none of it is forgotten.
Certainly not by Dr. Yu Changping
who was on the front lines as COVID spread
and ended up being the first doctor infected in January.
COVID wiped him out for three and a half months.
He says in a rare interview with Western media.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter translates] I was very weak after I got sick, he says.
It was life-threatening.
I lost some 15 kilograms
and even now, I have trouble breathing.
But as a doctor I learned a lot.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter] He says the Chinese government
didn't recognize the seriousness of the problem at first
because the number of infections seemed low.
But he says once it did
Beijing did the right thing with a strict lockdown.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter translates] That's why it's so difficult for other countries
to control the virus, he says.
Isolation is so important, yet
people elsewhere insist on freedom.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter] So while North America and Europe
struggle with a deluge of COVID cases
officially there hasn't been a single locally-transmitted case here
in months.
Nothing to distract from lazy afternoons
fishing on the banks of the Yangtze
or busy Saturdays shopping downtown.
Still, the human cost remains high
for Xie Shouli and her husband.
A musician she can only watch perform
on her phone now.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter] Back in January
right as Wuhan's lockdown was starting
he collapsed at home with a high fever.
She went from hospital to hospital
trying to get him admitted.
Finally finding one that wasn't already full.
Doctors sent him straight into intensive care, ICU.
He had COVID.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter translates] I'd heard COVID stories.
I was so afraid, she says.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter translates] I was so sad
and afraid I would never see him again, she says.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter translates] I was just left with his clothes.
[Speaking Mandarin]
[Reporter] Wuhan is full of sad stories this year.
Still, many feel they’ve survived tough times
and even dodged death.
They drink to continued health
and even to Wuhan's nightmare lockdown.
Which many think the world needs to emulate.
So Sasa, almost a year later very few cases.
Given what's happening around the world
is there a worry about yet another wave there?
Well you know, Adrienne, people are afraid of this virus.
They've gone through all of this
but because of that there are a lot of people
who also have this strange sense of immunity
that Wuhan is OK if they can only keep COVID out.
And China has put up some pretty big barriers
for people to come in, it's very difficult to come into the country right now.
If an infection is discovered
they have a very intensive system of tracing
that's true in every city in the country
and they also do massive testing.
They went through that in Wuhan itself back in May for the last time
but not since.
OK, Sasa Petricic in Beijing tonight.
Thank you, Sasa.
My pleasure.