Twenty-seven people died Sunday in southwestern China in the accident of the bus taking them to an anti-Covid quarantine site, local authorities announced. The vehicle, which was carrying a total of 47 people, “rolled over on its side“, said the local police, and the accident also left about twenty injured.
The accident, the deadliest in China since the beginning of the year, occurred in Qiannan prefecture, a poor, isolated and mountainous region of Guizhou province, where several ethnic minorities live. The provincial government confirmed, a few hours after the announcement of the accident, that the bus was transporting peopleto the place where they were going to be placed in quarantine, in connection with the epidemicof Covid.
It was not specified whether these people were sick, contact cases or simply inhabitants of a building having experienced a case of Covid, under the very strict policy “zero covidled by China. The province of Guizhou has recorded more than 900 new cases in the past two days, and in early September its capital, Guiyang, had been placed in confinement.
Growls against the “zero Covid” policy
Photos posted on social media showed the bus, with its roof completely down, being towed away by a tow truck. Another photo that quickly went viral appears to show the bus moving through the night, the driver and passengers all dressed in protective suits. AFP could not verify the authenticity of the photos.
On social networks, we mourned the dead but this was accompanied by discontent against the “zero Covid” policy, which often sees the inhabitants of groups of entire buildings transported, often at night, to quarantine places sometimes several miles away. hundreds of kilometers. “How you feel about this can’t just be expressed by lighting a candle and saying ‘rest in peace’“, commented on Weibo a user whose remark received in a short time 15,000 “like“.
“What proof do you have that you won’t be the one on that bus one night?“Launched another Internet user, also widely approved. With the most popular answer:Who says we’re not there? It is clear that we are all there. We’re all in this dark and terrifying bus“.
“Learn the lessons of this accident”
While expressing deep condolences, the government also stressed in a statement that there was a need to “draw lessons from this accident, examine the conditions of quarantine and transport of people affected by the epidemic, as well as road safety issues“.
During the confinement of the megalopolis of Shanghai for two months in the spring, many inhabitants of cities affected by Covid cases had been forcibly transported, in buses in the middle of the night, to summary facilities located in other provinces for be quarantined there – despite having tested negative for the virus.