After spending 76 days in lockdown in China, a British teacher living in the coronavirus epicentre Wuhan says he is now relieved to have opted against returning to the UK as it battles with its own mass outbreak.
Chris Hill, a foreign language teacher originally from Washington in Tyne and Wear, lives with his wife and four-year-old daughter around 10 minutes from the market where the global pandemic is thought to have originated.
“Wuhan has been under lockdown for around two-and-a-half months. If I was in England, I would just be going into lockdown, (making it) five, six, seven months in total,” he told the PA news agency.
“I’d take the three months over seven any day.”
“People who do live in Wuhan that were outside of the city when the lockdown took place, it allows them back in,” Mr Hill, 38, told PA.
“But the restrictions that I have of going out for two hours per day, those are still in place until the end of the month and then they’re going to reassess.”
Mr Hill said he expected to be entirely free to leave his home by the middle of May – almost four months on from the January 23 start of the city’s lockdown.
He added that carrying on with his teaching online had been hard, saying: “My wife still works, my daughter is being a hyperactive four-year-old who wants to go out but can’t.”
Having experienced it for two-and-a-half months himself, Mr Hill advised those struggling with the experience of being stuck at home: “What you like doing as a hobby – do it as much as you can.”
“Well, not drinking. That’s just stupid,” he added.
