E-Paper
Midnight evacuation, quarantine in metal boxes: China enforces zero Covid policy
China is aiming to eliminate Covid-19 outbreak before Lunar New Year and the Winter Olympics in Beijing next month. Around 20 million people have been sent to ‘quarantine centres’ in various cities. But social media videos describe the reality at these centres.
People contracting the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in China are forcefully confined to cramped metal boxes, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday. Many of these include pregnant women and children, the report further said.
The Mail report was based on videos posted on social media, which it said have been widely circulated. These videos talk about the situation in Xi’an, Anyang and Yuzhou, where people have been quarantined after a few cases of Omicron were reported.
Also Read | China locks down second city amid Omicron threat
In all, 20 million people - including 13 million in Xi’an – have been quarantined in these cities and are living in tiny cells, said the Daily Mail. These people are given wooden boxes and a toilet and are forced to remain in the metal boxes for as long as two weeks, the videos posted on Chinese social media platforms showed, according to the Mail.
The videos also showed workers in hazmat suits providing food to these people. Some of them have complained that very little food is left in the freezing metal boxes, the Mail said in its report.
A few residents of locked-down cities told the BBC that they were part of a 'big transfer' of thousands of people to the camps.
"There is nothing here, just basic necessities... Nobody has come to check up on us, what kind of quarantine is this?” a user said in one of the comments posted on social media.
As soon as a Covid-19 positive case surfaces in a city, the authorities ask people living in the entire area to leave their homes and board buses, which then take them to the quarantine centres - the metal boxes. The Daily Mail quoted a witness to report that some of the residents were asked to leave just after midnight.
The measures are part of China’s strict Covid-zero policy, under which Beijing is aiming to eliminate the outbreak before Lunar New Year and the Winter Olympics next month.
Also Read | Beijing on alert as partly-locked down Tianjin’s cases jump
China even sent three people to prison for more than four years over breaches of rules that led to Covid-19 outbreak in port city Dalian, in one of the harshest punishments for lapses in enforcing the government’s strict Covid-zero policy. The oversight allowed four people to infect 83 others, local media reported.
But the measures are not proving that effective. Apart from Dalian, fresh Covid-19 cases were reported in Tianjin, promoting the authorities to start a new round of sample testing among its 14 million residents.
Tianjin reported 33 domestically transmitted coronavirus infections with confirmed symptoms for Tuesday, up from 10 a day earlier, national data showed.
Including infections in Tianjin, mainland China reported a total of 166 local symptomatic cases for Tuesday, more than 110 a day earlier.
There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll at 4,636. As of January 11, mainland China had 104,189 confirmed symptomatic cases, including both local ones and those arriving from overseas.
