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At least 27 killed in quarantine bus crash in China
The news that the bus was carrying residents of an apartment complex to a quarantine centre – apparently after one Covid-19 case was detected in the complex – was first shared on social media
BEIJING: At least 27 people were killed and another 20 injured on Sunday after a bus carrying passengers to a Covid-19 quarantine centre crashed in a remote highway in southwest China’s Guizhou province.
The mishap occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning in Sandu county, around 170 km southeast of the provincial capital, Guiyang, local media reports said.
The bus was carrying 47 people and the 20 injured were being treated in hospital, police told Reuters.
The news that the bus was carrying residents of an apartment complex to a quarantine centre – apparently after one Covid-19 case was detected in the complex – was first shared on social media, possibly by family and friends of the victims.
It was confirmed by the Sandu county emergency management bureau to the news website Caixin that the passengers of the vehicle were being transported from Guiyang to Libo to a quarantine centre.
“Unverified reports and photos of the bus had been circulating throughout Sunday afternoon on Chinese social media generating an outpouring of anger once again at China’s strict Covid policies and the initial lack of transparency from the authorities,” Reuters said in a report on the accident.
“All of us are on this bus,” was a comment widely shared by social media app WeChat users.
The comments were subsequently censored from China’s social media. Most online details about the bus crash were scrubbed by Sunday evening.
According to the Guizhou-based Daily Tianyan News, the bus involved in the accident was often used as an “isolation and transfer vehicle for epidemic-related personnel in Guiyang City”.
This is the worst Covid-19-related accident in China since the coronavirus was first discovered in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late, 2019.
Nearly three years later, Beijing continues to implement the strict zero-Covid policy, which includes snap lockdowns, mandatory quarantine of those infected as well as their contacts and mass testing.
Even a handful of Covid-19 cases could attract strict lockdowns and mass tests.
China on Sunday reported 106 locally transmitted confirmed Covid-19 cases for Sunday including 50 in Guizhou, the national health commission said in its daily bulletin.
The southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu, meanwhile, is set to resume production and life “in an orderly manner” from Monday after having been locked down since September 1.
Chengdu, a city of more than 21 million residents, was the largest Chinese metropolis hit with curbs since Shanghai went through a bruising lockdown in April and May.
