27 people dead after Covid quarantine bus overturns in China, local authorities say
According to Lin Gang, the deputy mayor of Giang, the bus was carrying 45 residents from the provincial capital Giang to Libo County, a remote and mountainous town 155 miles away, for quarantine. The bus departed Giang at 12:10 p.m. (12:10 p.m. Saturday ET) and turned onto the expressway at 2:40 p.m.
Lynn said the cause of the crash remains under investigation.
It is still unclear why the quarantine bus will leave after midnight to take people to other cities for quarantine. China’s transport regulation prohibits long-distance passenger buses from operating between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.
Local authorities are under pressure to achieve the goal of “zero Covid”. The city has prepared 20 buses and 40 bus drivers to transport close contacts of Covid patients to other cities, the Jiangsu Evening Paper said on Saturday.
And as of Saturday, the city had relocated more than 7,000 people to other cities and about 3,000 more were waiting to be resettled outside Guiyang.
News of the deaths sparked an outcry on Chinese social media, with many questioning the country’s increasingly strict zero-covid policy.
Many posts about the accident published by state media have banned people from commenting, and search results for Guizhou have been filtered on Chinese social media.