London - Connor Reed was working in
Wuhan when he contracted the coronavirus in late 2019, suffering
common cold-like symptoms, then flu, and ultimately pneumonia
which hospitalised him and left him struggling to breathe.
Now fully recovered after a month of sickness, and still
living in Wuhan, where the epidemic first broke out, Welshman
Reed, 25, has adapted to the new normal in the city under
lockdown since late January.
"I first had a cold - just an everyday cold, a thing that
everybody gets. I then got better before I got worse. So from
the cold I progressed into the flu ... definitely the worst flu
that I've had."
"From the flu. I got better again, and that's when I had
pneumonia. The pneumonia stage was when I went to the hospital."
At the time of his admission, authorities in China were not
fully aware of the scale of the outbreak of the new virus. Reed
got confirmation at the end of December that he had had
COVID-19.
"When I had the flu symptoms, that felt like I'd been hit by
a truck. And it was quite debilitating ... however, it wasn't
life threatening."
"When I had pneumonia, that's the point where it was getting
quite serious. It felt like I could only use half my lung
capacity, and every breath I took wasn't enough and I just
couldn't get enough air."
Reed said it sounded like he was breathing through "a paper
bag" and as if there was stuff in his lungs that wouldn't shift.
But as a young man who wasn't in a critical state and with
the hospital facing an influx of people, Reed was sent home to
rest. He is now looking forward to the lockdown slowly lifting
and expects the quarantine to ease by the middle of next month.
Chinese authorities feel the tide is turning in their favour
and some vital industries in Wuhan were told they can resume
work on Wednesday, a day after President Xi Jinping visited
there for the first time since the outbreak began.
"If they release a quarantine too early ... we'll be back to
square one. It's better to be overly cautious than not cautious
enough," said Reed.
"Everything's changed, from how we go shopping to how we
manage the house ... Everybody's taken the time to adjust and we
all have adjusted. It's a case of people doing the best with
what they have," he said.
He believes the Chinese government has dealt with the
epidemic as well as it could, and because of the nature of
Chinese society, it could take strict measures which people
would adhere to.
As the outbreak accelerates outside China, Reed says: "Other
governments definitely can learn from it. However, each
individual country and individual government has different
responsibilities and different things that they can do."
"Also, people individually, they have to manage it
themselves and take their own precautions. They can't rely on
the government too much."