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On Sunday, Sep. 18, 27 people were killed in a bus crash in China's Guizhou province as they were being transferred from the capital Guiyang to a quarantine facility in a remote part of the province.
Flipped on its side
According to CCTV, the bus was carrying 45 passengers, as well as a driver and a staff member, when it rolled over at around 2.40am before falling into a ditch.
The bus had left the Yunyang district in the provincial capital of Guiyang just after midnight, and according to Reuters, had travelled about 170 km in its two and a half hour journey.
The crash killed 27 of those onboard, with 20 survivors being taken to nearby hospitals.
Image via Weibo
The tragedy prompted the deputy mayor of Guiyang to head to the scene to oversee the rescue efforts. In a press conference, he apologised on behalf of the staff, bowing and expressed his deep condolences.
Image via Guiyang Daily News
Lin went on to say that the provincial government would take lessons from the accident, and examine the quarantine and transportation of those linked with Covid-19 cases.
No reason was given for the crash.
70% of all of China's cases
According to The Guardian, the accident comes as the Guizhou province is in the midst of a surge in Covid-19 cases, with over 700 cases reported, up from 154 the day before. This represents 70 per cent of all of China's cases at the moment.
The city of Guiyang has been under lockdown since early September.
A Weibo user, who claimed that her mother was confirmed to have died on the bus, said the elderly woman had stayed indoors for half a month before being taken to quarantine on the ill-fated bus.
"I'm now terribly devastated. (My mum) was alive and kicking before, but our phone call yesterday night actually became the last time we talked," she said, adding that her mother had tested negative for Covid but was still forcibly dragged to be quarantined.
"I can't accept this sort of ending."
English news outlets seized upon such negative comments on Weibo, using them to illustrate dissatisfaction in China over the ongoing zero-Covid policy and its prioritisation above all other aspects of daily life.
According to The Guardian, the top-rated comment at the time of their publication was "Who said we're not on that bus late at night, we're clearly all there. We're all on this terrifying, dark bus", in a reference to the continued uncertainty surrounding the zero-Covid policy.
The Standard, a Hong Kong-based news outlet, quoted one commenter saying it was "ironic" that in the past two years, only two people had died because of Covid-19, while 27 had died to anti-epidemic measures.
Social media users also claimed that all passengers onboard the bus had tested negative in PCR tests, but were linked to a single Covid patient. They were forced to move to the quarantine centre as local authorities had aimed to achieve zero infections that day.
The topic even trended on Weibo before being removed. While there is some speculation that China's upcoming Communist Party Congress will bring about some change to the policy, most analysts don't think a change is coming anytime soon, if it even happens at all.
Top image adapted via Weibo