Many people left their home cities to visit families and celebrate the Chinese New Year holiday. The Ministry of Transport estimates that about 160 million people need to travel to get home so they can return to work, mainly in first- and second-tier cities.
Most Chinese companies were scheduled to resume work around Feb. 10. However, upon their return, people were required to self-quarantine for 14 days, some could not take possession of their rented properties, and in the past week several companies have had incidents of newly confirmed patients who interacted with other employees before their test results were available. Such companies had to shut down and have all employees quarantined.
