After almost eight months of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Universities in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province, have started welcoming returning students in batches.

Wuhan which was the Chinese city hardest-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic welcomed more than 9,100 undergraduate students on Monday, August 24.

The move comes as Wuhan was declared free of the virus by city officials in June after mass testing of the city’s entire 10 million population between 14 May and 1 June, which showed no confirmed infections, Eons Intelligence reports.

The Officials said almost the entire population, as well as the 300 asymptomatic patients, have been tested and all results come out negative. 

Wuhan’s coronavirus infections accounted for 4,634 deaths and 83,022 infections.

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The Universities, as seen in a video released by Peope’s Daily China, have buckled up to deal with the returning students by strictly observing all precautionary measures including social distancing, disinfection of premises and smart health record system.

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In an interview conducted by the Global Times, some of the returning students said that their emotional connection to their universities and the city have become even deeper despite the lockdown.

“I had tears in my eyes when I set foot on the campus again after such a long time. The university has witnessed the darkest time of the city during the epidemic outbreak,” Jin Xing, a second-year student from Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Monday.

According to the Deputy Minister of the Student Affairs Department of Wuhan University, Li Qin, 20,000 more students including graduating students and newly admitted students will resume from Septemeber 6 to 11.

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Li Qin noted that students who are currently outside the Chinese mainland are not allowed to return to their universities. 

The university is one of a few that have already announced the resumption date for students in Wuhan, a city that has 89 universities and more than 1 million college students, according to Global Times.

Speaking further, the Deputy Minister said that the university has implemented strict measures at all levels to prevent any potential cross-infection, including daily disinfection in areas where students frequently go, arranging rooms with large capacity for class and segmenting distribution of food in batches to avoid gathering.

He added that an online student information system will be used in the school’s epidemic prevention work, explaining that it will track the students’ movement in libraries and cafes, monitor the students’ daily temperature and record the health information of newly admitted students upon their registration.  

The same smart system is also being adopted in Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, another school that reopened on Saturday. 

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Students are required to use the system to order food online one day earlier and get the food to go instead of eating at the cafe to avoid gathering. 

“The preparation work that the school has done to welcome us made me feel safe and touched, my nervousness about living at school disappeared after I saw how the school made efforts to protect us,” said Xiao Yi, a second-year student from the School of Foreign Languages.