Following an outbreak of COVID-19 in the northern city of Dalian, China has restricted roughly 1,500 university students to their dorms and hotels.
Hundreds of students were moved to motels for observation after several dozen instances were recorded at Zhuanghe University City on Sunday.
Students had their meals delivered to their rooms while they were in class remotely.
The lockdown is the latest illustration of China’s zero-tolerance stance to the epidemic, which has disrupted people’s lives and livelihoods significantly.
For individuals even marginally affected by outbreaks, quarantines, mandatory testing, and travel restrictions have become the new normal. As winter approaches, the country’s immunization rate is among the highest in the world, and authorities have begun providing booster injections.
While those procedures have mostly been received with minimal public opposition, the recent killing of a confined person’s pet dog by health professionals sparked a flood of internet outrage. Local officials in Shangrao, China’s center city, issued a statement stating the pet owner and health staff had “reached an accord.”
The China Small Animal Protection Association asked for a quarantine mechanism to care for pets apprehended in such situations after the event.
It added in a statement that “pets are people’s spiritual partners and should not be hurt under the guise of combatting the epidemic.” “How can you even talk about humanitarianism if you bring the hand of doom down on an innocent life without the least capacity to protect itself?”
Beijing will require all passengers entering from other regions of the nation by plane, train, bus, or vehicle starting Wednesday to provide a negative viral test done within the previous 48 hours, among other additional precautions.
Despite sporadic occurrences in various regions of the nation, China has been able to contain large outbreaks in the last year, with a total of 98,315 cases documented and 4,636 deaths.
The National Health Commission declared on Monday that 32 new instances of local transmission had been reported in the previous 24 hours, with 25 of them in Dalian.
