---
title: "China Has Now Quarantined 35 Million People to Prevent Pandemic"
description: "As China struggles to keep a lid on the 2019-nCoV pandemic, it has now quarantined 12 cities and cancelled their public transportation."
date: "2020-01-24"
modified: "2020-01-24"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/china-quarantined-35-million-people-pandemic"
categories:
  - "Developments"
  - "Health & Medicine"
tags:
  - "2019-ncov"
  - "medicine"
  - "Pandemic"
---

# China Has Now Quarantined 35 Million People to Prevent Pandemic

![As China struggles to keep a lid on the 2019-nCoV pandemic, it has now quarantined 12 cities and cancelled their public transportation.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/china-quarantined-35-million-people.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

As of Friday, eight more Chinese cities have been placed on a [travel lockdown](<https://futurism.com/neoscope/wuhan-china-quarantine>) — bringing the total to 12 — in an attempt to quarantine the coronavirus that appeared in Wuhan last month.

As a result, public transportation has been suspended in towns that contain over half the population of China's Hubei Province, [according to *The New York Times*](<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html>).

Now 35 million Hubei Province residents are effectively quarantined within their cities — and those who don’t get special authorization to leave from the government are trapped in an increasingly dire situation.

The government is taking extreme measures to quarantine the 2019-nCoV virus, which has sickened more than 830 people in China, 26 of whom have died. But within those cities, the *NYT* reports that conditions are worsening for the trapped residents.

"We won't have a new year celebration tonight," Wuhan resident Wu Qiang told the *NYT* as we waited outside a hospital for an update on his son. "There's no feeling for it, and no food."

And it's not just festivals. With transportation cut off, according to the *NYT*, hospitals are becoming overburdened and stores are running out of food. Soon, the quarantined cities [could face crises](<https://futurism.com/neoscope/virologist-china-pandemic-worse-sars>) as resources dwindle — unless the government steps in to make sure people are cared for.

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)