The first half of 2020 MasterShip was heavily affected by the Corona virus. This was partly caused by the effects of the Corona pandemic in the Netherlands. But more specifically because our engineering production facility is in Wuhan, China. The cancellation of our visas for visiting our Wuhan office in mid-January was our first direct experience with the Corona pandemic
The personal report by one of our engineers in Wuhan, Mr. Gang Wu:
First month, February 2020:
Everyone stays at home, it is strictly not allowed to go out. All public transport, private cars are not allowed on the road. Groceries are procured by governmental-designated staff and then placed at your front door. All sterilized articles and masks are out of stock and cannot be bought. Supermarket things are very expensive, prices more than doubled. Thanks to the preceding Chinese New Year, my family had a lot of food in stock!
When the hospital of Raytheon Mountain (which took about 10 days to build) could be used, it brought the epidemic situation in Wuhan further under control.
March and April 2020:
A health code on your smartphone is introduced:
Personal health code on smartphone
With the health code we can visit the supermarket for groceries and the hospital for healthcare. But just for two hours. Wherever people go you have to show the health code and take temperature. Once a fever is detected, the health code of the person immediately turns red and your contacts are investigated and closely monitored. Older people without smartphones can’t get out. Prices began to return to normal.
If you need to go to work, you must show the special certificate for your work permit. But these are only available for special healthcare and governmental companies. For MasterShip we cannot get these work permits.
All my MasterShip colleagues escaped out of Wuhan city to find more safety. They were not able to work. I stayed at home and due to the home network I could still do some work.
For private persons and companies there is no financial compensation so far. Only specific corona involved healthcare is taken care of by the government.
May 2020：
We are still not allowed to work. But we can go out on the street with health codes and masks. Still everywhere they take your temperature. Restaurants are opening again. Accept for the non-working in this month we can live a fairly normal life.
June 2020:
From the beginning of June step by step offices are allowed to open again. From mid-June my colleagues return back into the Wuhan city and we are also allowed to pick up our work in our office. The last time we left the office was 23th of January to have our Chinese New Year holiday. It turned out to be a long leave!