A COVID-19 descriptive study of life after lockdown in Wuhan, China

On April 8th, 2020, the Chinese government lifted the lockdown and opened up public transportation in Wuhan, China, the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic. After 76 days in lockdown, Wuhan residents were allowed to travel outside of the city and go back to work. Yet, given that there is still no vaccine for the virus, this leaves many doubting whether life will indeed go back to normal. The aim of this research was to track longitudinal changes in motivation for self-isolating, life structured, indicators of well-being and mental health after lockdown was lifted. We have recruited 462 participants in Wuhan, China, prior to lockdown lift between the 3rd and 7th of April, 2020 (Time 1), and have followed up with 292 returning participants between 18th and 22nd of April, 2020 (Time 2), 284 between 6th and 10th of May, 2020 (Time 3), and 279 between 25th and 29th of May, 2020 (Time 4). This 4-wave study used latent growth models to examine how Wuhan residents’ psychological experiences change (if at all) within the first two months after lockdown was lifted. The Stage 1 manuscript associated with this submission received in-principle acceptance (IPA) on 2 June 2020. Following IPA, the accepted Stage 1 version of the manuscript was preregistered on the OSF at https://osf.io/g2t3b. This preregistration was performed prior to data analysis. Generally, our study found that: 1) a majority of people still continue to value self-isolation after lockdown was lifted; 2) by the end of lockdown, people perceived gradual return to normalcy and restored structure of everyday life; 3) the psychological well-being slightly improved after lockdown was lifted; 4) people who utilized problem-solving and help-seeking as coping strategies during lockdown had better well-being and mental health by the end of the lockdown; 5) those who experienced more disruptions in daily life during lockdown would display more indicators of psychological ill-being by the end of the lockdown.