American describes journey back to Wuhan amid coronavirus pandemic: Feels good to be reunited
Christopher Suzanne returns to Wuhan after fleeing the coronavirus outbreak to reunite with family.
Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here.
Christopher Suzanne, an American who lives in Wuhan, China, where the novel coronavirus outbreak is believed to have originated, described his journey back to the city with his wife and baby.
“We were finally able to get my wife back to her family on Monday morning,” Suzanne told "America's Newsroom." “It was a great sight to see my father-in-law hold my son for the first time in a long time [and] make him laugh. It was a good feeling.”
Suzanne said that he and his family had traveled to upstate New York and got stuck in the United States.
“We started out just before the lockdown, we came to have my son baptized … We spent two weeks in the U.S. and then the flights just kept canceling and canceling again,” Suzanne said.
“Then finally we contacted the Chinese Embassy and they were able to help us figure out a flight to get back,” he went on to explain, adding that they flew from the U.S. to Shanghai. The family made their way back to Wuhan on Monday.
THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK, STATE-BY-STATE
When host Ed Henry asked Suzanne what it’s like on the ground in Wuhan he said, “It’s slowly opening up."
He added, “I read a message earlier from some other folks and they said, ‘From what I see it's about 70 percent open’ and I had to kind of correct that person and say, ‘From what I notice in my experience, I've been here about ten years, Wuhan is maybe only about 20 or 30 percent open.’”
He said people are "still riding their bicycle outside, everyone is wearing a mask much more than usual.
Suzanne noted that there aren't too many businesses that are open and "it's all takeaway or delivery" at coffee shops and restaurants.
Henry also asked Suzanne if people in Wuhan are talking about how the outbreak potentially started and the possible connection to the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab.
Last week a Fox News report, which cited multiple sources, revealed that there is increasing confidence that the COVID-19 outbreak likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China's attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“Unfortunately there's not too much news about that here,” Suzanne said. “I live just down the street from the lab, I have students. Some of my students work at the lab. For us, as expats here, we’re not too worried about it.”
“It’s not something we converse about, not because we can’t, just because it's not something that we've actually thought about,” he continued.
Fox News Gregg Re and Bret Baier contributed to this report.
Fox News First
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox.
By entering your email and clicking the Subscribe button, you agree to the Fox News Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, and agree to receive content and promotional communications from Fox News. You understand that you can opt-out at any time.