China sets up makeshift quarantine camps in Beijing as residents panic over Covid lockdown | World | News
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Panic in Beijing over a looming Covid lockdown has emptied streets across China’s capital. This comes as workers in the capital quickly build a Covid quarantine facility made up of shipping containers and tents. The looming lockdown in Beijing follows growing protests across the country amid anger at the Covid-zero policy.
Bloomberg’s Emma O’Brien said: “They are erecting shipping containers, and tents in preparation for quarantining people who get Covid.
“This is not necessarily people who need to be hospitalised or get really sick.
“Despite murmurs earlier in the month that the rules would be relaxed, they are still pursuing Covid-zero, and they do isolate every single Covid case in a government-run facility.
“We are seeing more than 1,000 cases a day in Beijing.”
Several makeshift quarantine centres have popped up across central Beijing, while workers are also turning conference centres into field hospitals.
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On Friday, residents in Beijing were seen emptying supermarket shelves and overwhelming delivery apps in advance of the potential lockdown.
Some apartment blocks are already locking down, as Dawn Wei Tan, from the Straits Times, tweeted: “My building in Beijing has just been sealed and I’m in lockdown for the next seven days because of a Covid case 8 floors above me.
“I suppose I should be thankful that I get to stay at home because if this had happened months ago, I’d be taken into centralised quarantine.”
In the Chaoyang district of Beijing, more than 30 portable cabins and two toilets are in place with a guard at the site telling Bloomberg it was going to be a quarantine facility for those with mild or no symptoms.
One resident, 36-year-old Liu, told Bloomberg: “I’m not scared of getting infected at all. I’m in fear of getting locked down or even sent to a quarantine facility.
Meanwhile, officials in Zhengzhou are still reeling after violent protests rocked the world’s largest iPhone factory in the city.
Footage from the Foxconn plant showed hundreds of workers smashing surveillance cameras and windows, and tipping over police vehicles.
Despite the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s stubborn Covid-zero policy, cases have exploded in recent weeks.
On Thursday the number of daily cases hit a new record, with more than 31,000 new cases nationwide – the highest number since the pandemic began.
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