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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaPeople & Culture

Coronavirus: Shanghai neighbour Zhejiang imposes draconian quarantine

  • Some residents of the coastal Chinese province are being locked inside their homes while others must present a ‘passport’ to go out every two days for supplies
  • Weddings and funerals discouraged as ‘unessential’ venues are also shut down

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Cured coronavirus patients leave hospital in Hangzhou, one of four cities in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang which has adopted draconian quarantine measures for its residents. Photo: Xinhua
Viola Zhou
In the Chinese coastal province of Zhejiang, some 560km (350 miles) east of where the new coronavirus originated, at least four cities have introduced measures that mirror the draconian rules established by Hubei province – epicentre of the outbreak – to keep the virus from spreading.
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Authorities in Zhejiang, which neighbours the port city of Shanghai, have closed “unessential” public venues, banned funerals and weddings, limited the number of times people can go out and quarantined families at home, sometimes by locking them in.

In the Zhejiang cities of Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Taizhou – which have a combined population of more than 30 million – each household is being issued a “passport”, usually a piece of paper that carries one’s name, home address and an official stamp. Only one person per household is permitted to leave their home every two days.

The rules were announced on state media and the governments’ social media accounts, and families have already received their “passports”.

To enforce the new travel rules, community officers have been stationed at the entrance of some residential compounds. Every time a resident leaves their compound, an officer at the entrance marks the time and date on the “passport”. People from the same household are then barred from going out again for the next two days.

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