27 killed as bus crashes on the way to COVID-quarantine facility in China

September 20

14:13 2022

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At least 27 people were killed when a bus in south-west China crashed as it was taking them to a COVID-quarantine facility.

The bus, which was transporting 47 people from Guiyang, the provincial capital of Guizhou, to a distant county 155 miles (249 kilometers) away, reportedly flipped and rolled into a ditch in the early hours of Sunday on a steep section of the roadway.

According to the Chinese police, 20 people are being treated for injuries, and emergency responders were dispatched to the scene in remote Qiannan prefecture.

Chinese regulations say passenger buses are not allowed to drive on the highway between the hours of 02:00 and 05:00 which was the time the bus crashed.

“At present, on-site rescue work is basically completed, the treatment of the injured and aftercare of the deceased are being carried out in an orderly manner, and the cause of the accident is under investigation,” the local government said on social media.

Anger and criticism over China’s unrelenting zero-COVID policy has since sparked as the country is still enforcing some of the tightest COVID regulations in the world in an effort to break the chains of transmission by quarantining anyone who may have been exposed and isolating those who have been diagnosed.