A Beijing man has quarantined thousands of his neighbors after ignoring orders to stay home only to find out he has Covid, prompting police to launch an investigation against him.
Authorities in the Chinese capital have ordered hundreds of thousands of residents to stay in their homes over the past five weeks to contain the largest outbreak of the Corona virus since the start of the pandemic. And on Sunday, authorities announced that a man in his 40s, named Sun, did not comply with a lockdown order issued to him after visiting a “high-risk” mall.
“During his period of isolation at home… he repeatedly went outside and walked around the neighborhood,” said Pang Zhuhong, an official with the Beijing Public Security Agency. It later emerged that Sun and his wife were injured, prompting authorities to place 5,000 people in their neighborhood under home quarantine and move another 250 to a state-run quarantine center.
It comes after Beijing began easing restrictions on Monday by reopening parks, museums and cinemas and announcing that the outbreak was under control. China is adopting a “zero Covid” strategy based on strict lockdowns, large-scale testing and long-term quarantine to eliminate epidemic hotspots.
Severe penalties are applied to violators, and the police have launched an investigation into San. Since the end of April, more than 1,700 infections have been recorded in Beijing, most of them mutated Omicron, and although this number is considered small by international standards, China, which adheres to the zero Covid strategy, considers this alarming. . Over the past week, the number of injuries has significantly decreased. And on Sunday, Beijing government spokesman Zhou Hejian said, “No new infections have been reported in the community (outside quarantine centers) for two days.” “The situation is stable and improving … but the risk of recovery is still there,” he added.
