Travel resumes as Wuhan lockdown ends

Cars queued up at expressway toll gates and passengers prepared to board trains and planes to leave Wuhan, Hubei province at midnight. The city, the hardest-hit area by the COVID-19 outbreak on the Chinese mainland, reopened on Wednesday after a 76-day lockdown.

At Fuhe toll gate in nothern Wuhan, cars honked horns and passed through after barricades were removed at midnight.

The first inter-city train left Wuhan at 6:25 am for Jingzhou city in Hubei province. The high-speed train G431 departed for Nanning, capital of South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, at 7:06 am. It was the first high-speed train to depart from Wuhan since the city's lockdown was lifted.

A total of 276 trains will depart from Wuhan on Wednesday to cities including Shanghai, Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong province and Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan province, carrying more than 55,000 passengers.