Medical workers who helped fight the COVID-19 in Wuhan last year and their families enjoy themselves on the cherry road in Wuhan University. The university is one of the best places in China to enjoy the flowers. Photo: VCG

Wuhan, the city that was hardest-hit by the coronavirus, has returned to the same hustling and bustling metropolis it was pre-pandemic one year after the lockdown was lifted. However, this return is tinged with caution and regret as COVID-19 is still plaguing the rest of the worldwhile the stigmatization of Wuhan by some Western politicians is strongly refuted by local people. 

On Wednesday, people in Wuhan were still wearing masks, and disinfection, temperature checks and health code scans are necessary for public venues, and some nightclubs are still closed or limit the number of visitors. 

A local taxi driver surnamed Peng said he hopes residents, even strangers in the city, could shake hands, he himself could smile to his customers without masks covering his and their faces and people could talk without the need to keep social distancing.

Aside from regrets over the epidemic, Wuhan residents were strongly furious and they refuted the West's smears and politicization to pin the coronavirus blame on Wuhan.  

Huang Haixia, who has lived in Jiqing Street for years, told the Global Times on Wednesday it seems that the West led by the US is deliberately throwing mud at Wuhan to conceal their own misdeeds. 

"Why does the US keep claiming Wuhan is the origin of the coronavirus, but when we questioned its athletes during the Wuhan Military World Games in October 2019, the US dared not to show any test results or health proof?" Huang said, noting that she believed the US must be hiding something, and that World Health Organization experts should go to the US for coronavirus origin research.   

After a joint WHO-China report on tracing the origins of the coronavirus was released at the end of March, Chinese scientists from the WHO-China virus tracing team suggested that it is time for scientists to dig somewhere else and test more hypotheses to solve the mystery.

"Wuhan is the victim, just like New York City, Melbourne and Tokyo are victims. None of us is a beneficiary of this outbreak," Zhou Ning, a cardiologist from the Tongji Hospital in Wuhan and a frontline doctor during the epidemic, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Stigmatizing a city for political interest without any evidence is really depraved from the perspective of human conscience, Zhou said. 

As the proverb goes, "the wind would break the tallest tree," the slander from the West against Wuhan or even China reflects that China did very well in the anti-epidemic battle as "outstanding people are liable to be attacked by jealousy."

Exploring the origins of the virus is a very hard and complex scientific issue and it is difficult to find the origins in months, Zhou said