On January 11, 2020, five years ago to the day, Covid-19 officially caused its first death in Wuhan, in central China. Return to this Chinese city where the coronavirus was first detected before spreading around the world, combining archive photos by Hector Retamal with those taken recently by this AFP photographer.
Five years have passed since January 11, 2020, when China announced the first death from an unknown coronavirus, namely the death of a 61-year-old man who regularly shopped in a market in the metropolis Wuhan of 11 million inhabitants in central China. The death of this man, whose very name remains unknown, was followed by nearly 7 million others around the globe, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), but the real figure would be closer to 20 million deaths caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Agence France Presse (AFP) photographer based in Shanghai, China, Chilean Hector Retamal arrived in Wuhan on January 23, 2020, the same day the Chinese city was placed in quarantine and closed to the outside world. Accompanied by his colleagues, the Venezuelan Leo Ramirez and the French Sébastien Ricci, he was able to document the situation in the deserted streets and crowded hospitals of Wuhan, for more than a week, producing photos and videos that remained in people’s memories, at a time when the exact nature of the epidemic threat was little known. It is from his photos captured at the end of January 2020 in Wuhan, epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic and which has become a ghost town, as well as those he took five years later, on December 21, 2024 in a city where life has taken back its rights, Hector Retamal has created a portfolio of combined images, before and after.
This combined image shows a policeman standing guard outside the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, January 24, 2020 (top), and women standing outside the same market closed by large blue fences, on December 21, 2024, almost five after China confirmed its first death from Covid-19. Located in the center of Wuhan, the Huanan market, which brings together 4 markets in total, offering fish, poultry and other live animals for sale, is the place where the coronavirus was detected for the first time and was the epicenter of the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Five years after its closure following the Covid-19 epidemic, the site never reopened and was left abandoned, proof that life in Wuhan has not completely returned to its previous course.
The combination photo above shows caregivers in protective suits standing near an elderly man wearing a face mask who collapsed and died on a street near a hospital in Wuhan on January 30 2020 (top), and a view of the same place on December 21, 2024. “On the eve of our departure, we witnessed a scene that has become emblematic. A man was lying on the ground in the street. He was dead. Around him, residents were moving around. A panicked woman screamed before rushing into a building. Finally, caregivers covered in white overalls approached him, observing him without touching him, like a plague victim,” said Hector Retamal about his iconic photo.
-“We never knew what this man died of, although we tried to get information. But the image of the corpse of this old man left on the road and the agitation around him embodied the crisis more than any other,” he added.
Above, this combined image shows people wearing protective masks as they wait in line outside a pharmacy in Wuhan on January 30, 2020 (top), and an exterior view of the same pharmacy on December 21, 2024.
The combination photograph above shows medical staff, wearing protective clothing against a previously unknown coronavirus, arriving with a patient at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital on January 25, 2020 (top) and a view of the same entrance hall of the hospital on December 21, 2024. “The shock really arrived when we went to the outskirts of the hospitals. People were lining up outside and inside. They had brought their stools. And stranger still, they would come up to me and pull on my arm so I could go in, to see. They wanted to show me what was happening, a completely unusual reaction in China. I was apprehensive about following them, not for fear of the virus but for fear of attracting the attention of the hospital guards and them calling the police. However, I returned briefly and was able to see how complicated the situation was; the saturation of hospitals was obvious,” said Hector Retamal.
This composite image shows a police officer manning a checkpoint blocking access to a bridge as residents stayed home and avoided transportation due to the virus outbreak in the city of Wuhan on January 29 2020 (top), and motorists crossing the same bridge over the Yangtze River on December 21, 2024. Faced with the dangerousness of the coronavirus and the speed with which it spread in Wuhan, a strong decision was taken on January 23 by the Chinese authorities, that of quarantining the population of the city then a few days later, the entire province, Hubei, trapping more than 50 million people. Confinement was decreed to avoid contact between residents. Other barrier gestures have become widespread, such as wearing a mask. Little by little, the whole of China found itself barricaded to stem the epidemic. The lockdown in Wuhan was lifted two months later, in early April 2020.
