• Bus leaves Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province, for a quarantine hotel in a different part of the province.
• Accident draws outrage from a public growing weary with the country’s strict “zero-Covid” policies.
• China continues to take some of the strictest Covid-19 measures in the world.

Local authorities said at least 27 people were killed when a bus in southwest China crashed while transporting them to a Covid-19 quarantine facility, eliciting outrage from a public weary of the country’s strict “zero-Covid” policies.

The bus overturned on an expressway around 2:40 a.m. on Sunday, 2 1/2 hours after leaving Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou Province, for a quarantine hotel in another part of the province, according to state broadcaster CCTV, citing Lin Gang, Guiyang’s deputy mayor.

He said there was one driver, one staff member, and 45 residents of Guiyang’s Yunyan District on board. In addition to the 27 fatalities, 20 people were injured and were treated at a nearby hospital.

Lin stated that officials were “extremely sorry” for the accident and that the cause was being investigated. He also stated that Covid-related transportation and isolation procedures would be reviewed.

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Three officials from Yunyan District, where the bus originated, have also been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.

The news of the accident sparked outrage on social media, with some questioning why the passengers were being transported in the middle of the night. On Chinese social media, a hashtag about the accident received hundreds of millions of views and was the top trending topic.

“Actually, 1.4 billion people are all on the same bus, the bus of Covid prevention and control,” one comment read, referring to the total population of China.

China maintains some of the strictest Covid-19 measures in the world, attempting to break down transmission chains by isolating those with confirmed infections and quarantining anyone in their vicinity who may have been exposed.

Local officials, who are under enormous pressure to keep outbreaks under control, will sometimes bus entire communities to different cities or even provinces if there is insufficient quarantine capacity nearby.

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