NEW YORK CITY. – The Chinese New Year parade has been held in Lower Manhattan on Feb. 9 as scheduled. During the event, signs of support for the Wuhan community originally affected by the coronavirus have been displayed in the parade floats.

Despite the threat and widespread fear of contagion of the coronavirus, according to New York State Senator John Liu, around 20,000 people attended the celebrations, a number similar to that of previous years and without significant drops.

The 21st edition of the Chinese New Year parade has started at Mott and Canal Street and ended at Eldridge and Forsyth Streets, with a duration of approximately three hours.

Among the floats run by organizations, schools, and entities of the Chinese community in New York, dragons and lions have gone around and greeted all those who stopped by the streets to admire the show.

The atmosphere in the parade did not convey concern. Among the paradegoers, some wore surgical masks and many offered tributes to the Chinese community affected by the epidemic virus.

Emily Conway, 20, originally from China, has attended the parade as every year.

“I am not worried about the risk of being infected. I am Chinese but I have always lived in New York. Here there are people from anywhere in the world and, if we worry about everything, we stop living because of fear”, Conway said.

Other people have emphasized the racism that is being generated towards the Chinese community since the coronavirus burst. In different countries of the world, the Chinese community has used the hashtag “ImNotAVirus” to denounce the social stigma and discrimination that the coronavirus outbreak has generated.

Nancy YinYuan, 20, studies in New York but is originally from Beijing, where her entire family continues to live. This is the first time she attends the Chinese New Year parade in New York.

“In China, we do not celebrate the New Year like that. Anyway, I think it is something incredible for the integration of the Chinese community in America, especially now that it seems that people believe that, only because you are Chinese, you are more likely to have the coronavirus”, YinYuan said.

Some attendees at the parade pointed out the state of emergency that is being experienced in China and the breakdown of the routine even in the capitals and the most important cities of other Asian countries.

Polly Zhang, 23, is a Chinese woman who works in New York City.

“My whole family is in China and when I talk to them on the phone they tell me that there are no people in the streets, that they only go out to buy food at the supermarket and always wearing masks. Children can’t go to school because they have suspended classes”, Zhang said.

Although the Chinese New Year parade in Lower Manhattan has been held normally, other events organized for the occasion, such as the Lunar New Year Chinese Temple Bazaar scheduled for Feb. 1, have been canceled due to contagious anxiety.

As a precaution, other cities in the world have decided to cancel or postpone the Chinese New Year celebrations this time. Hong Kong and Beijing in China, Paris in France and Miami in Florida are some of the places where dragon parades have not been seen on the streets this year.

At the moment, according to the World Health Organization, 105 more deaths have been reported due to the coronavirus in China, reaching a total of 1,770 deaths from the epidemic. The cases of infected in Chinese territory reach more than 70,000. Only 15 cases of coronavirus without deaths have been recorded in the United States.