Videos of quarantine camps are going viral on social media in which people who are contracting COVID-19 in China are shown being forcefully confined to cramped metal boxes.
An uptick in COVID-19 cases in some major cities just weeks before the Beijing Winter Olympics is a serious cause of concern for the Communist country. China is known to largely control its initial outbreak with a mix of lockdowns, border closures and mass testing.
Few residents from cities under lockdown narrated their ordeal to the BBC saying they were part of a ‘big transfer’ of thousands of people to the camps. Pregnant women, children and the elderly have also been sent to the camps in Xi’an in Central China’s Shaanxi Province, where they are forced to stay for as long as two weeks.
Xi’an reported 13 new confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases on Monday. The city had registered 2,017 local cases amid the latest resurgence. Of these, 417 had recovered by Monday.
The city kicked off a new round of mass testing in key areas at 9 a.m. Tuesday to further curb the spread of the virus, said Lyu Yongpeng, deputy director of the city’s health commission.
Xi’an currently has a total of three high-risk areas and 55 medium-risk areas, after it downgraded the classifications of five areas from medium-risk for COVID-19 to low-risk on Saturday.
People are shown living in tiny metal boxes with wooden beds and attached toilets. According to a Daily Mail report, 20 million have been confined to their homes in China and they can’t even leave their home, even to buy food.
It is further reported that 5.5 million people in China’s Anyang were locked down late Monday after two cases of the omicron variant were reported.
