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Coronavirus: Angolans in Wuhan “psychologically exhausted” after a month in quarantine

The 40 or so Angolan students held in Wuhan are "psychologically exhausted", in the face of the "no end in sight" crisis, the representative admitted, a month after the city was quarantined.

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"It's been a month without going out, food is always the same and a constant concern", described to the Lusa Euclides Simeão agency, representative of Angolan students in Wuhan. "We look for good news, but we only see the situation getting worse", he said. "Psychologically, we are exhausted", he admitted.

Located in central China, Wuhan was placed under quarantine on 23 January, with entry and exit prohibited. The city, with about eleven million inhabitants, counts, in total, about 46 thousand infected and more than 1700 killed due to the new coronavirus, called Covid-19, which was initially reported at the end of last year and which has already killed more 2000 people across China.

Euclides Simeão, a Computer Science engineering student, admits that, "as things are", the quarantine will last up to three months.

Among the 38 Angolan students who were held in Wuhan, there were no cases of contamination by the disease, but the representative pointed out the lack of support provided by some universities. "There are universities that provide food to students, three meals a day, but there are others that have not been happening so much", he says.

The Hubei University of Technology, where he studies and resides, is "making life easier" by assigning employees to shop in the few supermarkets in the city that remain open, thus ensuring access to fresh products.

However, Cristo José Sebastião, a student at Huazhong University, complains about the lack of essential goods, including mineral water. "The water they supply is tap water," he tells Lusa. "These days, I have been eating flour with water and sugar. I only have five bottles of water left", he says.

Retained on the university campus, José Sebastião spends his days listening to music. A security guard prevents him from leaving the dormitory, an 18-story building, from which 90 percent of his colleagues have already been repatriated.

Several countries have already repatriated their citizens from Wuhan, including Portugal, Brazil or Timor-Leste, and Luanda says it is also studying this possibility.

Sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs quoted in the press said they were negotiating with the Chinese authorities to remove young people from Wuhan, "the process being only dependent on the sanitary measures and restrictions imposed, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus".

The press attaché at the Angolan embassy in Beijing told Lusa that, for now, "access to Wuhan is reserved only to the Chinese state's means" and that "the support that can be provided is limited to the psychological component".

The National Assembly of Angola last week passed a resolution of solidarity with Angolan citizens in China with only the votes of the People's Liberation Movement of Angola (MPLA, in power). The opposition parties proposed to add to the document the imperative need for the Government to ‘send for’ Angolans who are in China, which was not accepted by the majority.

Sara Santos, in charge of the education of one of the students, laments the Lusa agency for the slowness of the authorities and asks: "Is there a need for an infected student to finally provide help?".

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