After a few cases of Covid-19 were found in their hostel, nearly 500 students from China’s top broadcast journalism school were taken to a quarantine facility.
Beginning on Friday night, a bus was used to transport the 488 students from Communication University of China as well as 19 teachers and five helpers.
A cornerstone of China’s draconian “zero-Covid” policy has been the detention of anyone suspected of having been in touch with someone who tested positive for the virus. The quarantine facilities include field hospitals in addition to former stadiums and exposition halls that have come under fire for being overcrowded, unhygienic, and housing bad food.
The lockdowns have caused widespread economic damage, disrupted worldwide supply networks for electronics and other goods, and spurred protests online and physical altercations with police and medical personnel. The summer’s week-long lockdown in Shanghai, the largest city in China, led to a mass exodus of migrant workers and foreign businesspeople.
Even though there were only 1,248 new domestic transmission cases recorded on Sunday, 65 million Chinese citizens were still under lockdown as of last week. The majority of those had no symptoms.
Analysts will be searching for clues on how China’s handling of the pandemic is influencing economic activity in the second-largest economy in the world with the release of economic statistics this week. Nearly daily testing, travel restrictions, and the suspension of education at all levels have all been implemented in conjunction with lockdowns.
While nearly every other country has worked to return to normal life by using vaccines and medications to battle the virus, China has continued the policy’s tenacious enforcement. Xi, who has not left China since the pandemic began in early 2020, has taken control of all the levers of power and adopted a combative foreign policy, while marginalising or imprisoning opponents. He has abolished presidential term limits and will likely be elected to a third five-year term as head of the Communist Party at the party conference held next month.
