Thousands of Covid-negative Beijing residents sent to quarantine

Thousands of Covid-negative individuals Due to a handful of infections, Beijing citizens were forcibly transported to quarantine hotels for the night, as the capital begins to impose increasingly stringent control measures akin to virus-hit Shanghai.

Beijing has been fighting the pandemic’s worst outbreak since it began. Since late April, the Omicron type has infected over 1,300 people, forcing restaurants, schools, and tourist destinations to close indefinitely.

China’s plan to eliminate Covid instances involves border restrictions, lengthy quarantines, mass testing, and targeted lockdowns.

According to images and a government notification extensively circulated on social media, almost 13,000 residents of the locked-down Nanxinyuan residential compound in southeast Beijing were evacuated to quarantine hotels overnight Friday due to 26 new diseases identified in recent days.

“Experts have determined that all Nanxinyuan residents undergo centralised quarantine beginning midnight May 21 for seven days,” authorities from Chaoyang district said Friday.

“Please cooperate, otherwise you will bear the corresponding legal consequences.”

Social media photos showed hundreds of residents with luggage queueing in the dark to board coaches parked outside the compound.

“Some of us have been locked down for 28 days since April 23, and we all tested negative throughout,” wrote one resident on the Twitter-like Weibo.

“A lot of my neighbours are elderly or have young children.”

“The transfer really makes us feel like we’re in a wartime scene,” resident and real estate blogger Liu Guangyu posted on Weibo early Saturday.

According to screenshots uploaded on Weibo, residents were urged to pack their clothes and vital things and that their homes will be cleansed afterward.

Thousands of negative Shanghai residents were bussed to makeshift quarantine centers hundreds of kilometers away last month as the 25-million-strong metropolis ramped up its attempts to stop the virus from spreading.

Weibo users voiced broad concern that Beijing authorities were adopting a similar approach to Shanghai, where residents have endured a months-long siege that has denied many people proper food and medical treatment.

By Saturday am, the Weibo hashtag “All residents of Nanxinyuan compound were dragged to quarantine” had been blocked.

“This is exactly the same as Shanghai, the first step is to cut off water and electricity, then demand keys… then disinfect homes. Electrical appliances, wooden furniture, clothes, food — they’re all done for,” read one comment.

Beijing authorities on Saturday extended work from home guidance to one more district, one day after halting the vast majority of public bus and subway services.