COVID lockdown in Guangzhou traps Hongkonger outdoors for 5 days
Chow said he slept on the stone benches in the park and there were many mosquitoes and bugs.
A Hong Kong student in the Chinese city of Guangzhou went five days without a shower and was at the mercy of the elements as local authorities blocked him from leaving a housing estate in a COVID-19 lockdown.
Chow told of his helplessness at being stuck outdoors inside the residential neighborhood, where officers were conducting tests and controlling entry and exit movements after confirming a case of coronavirus infection.
The Jinxiu Peninsula estate of Panyu district in Guangzhou, the capital city of southern Guangdong province, was not where Chow was staying while he underwent a local research program. He was sending his girlfriend home after 11 p.m. on May 28 when the estate was cordoned off and COVID-19 preventive measures took effect.
Local authorities acted after confirming the disease in a 60-year-old man resident in Jinxiu Peninsula. He was one of 32 patients detected as of May 29 in a major infection cluster that originated in the Liwan district virus outbreak last month.
Chow’s girlfriend could not accommodate him as she was living with family, so the young man had no choice but to linger in the park for five days without shower facilities.
“I would sleep on the stone benches in the park and take shelter in a pavilion when it rained,” he told Apple Daily. “There were so many mosquitoes and bugs. My body is swollen all over from the bites.”
He managed to persuade the authorities only once to let him take the COVID-19 test, which turned out negative. They were reluctant to test him as the government was footing the bill and he was not a resident of Jinxiu Peninsula.
Following the negative result, Chow was still barred from leaving, and when the authorities did a second round of testing, no one was willing to help him again.
Chow said that over those five long days, he was unable to get any assistance from the Hong Kong government’s Economic and Trade Office in Guangdong or the Beijing-loyal Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions’ consultation service center in Guangzhou.
Employees told him that their hands were tied as they could not interfere with the local authorities’ anti-pandemic measures.
As the storms grew heavier, the pavilion proved to be an inadequate shelter and he had to resort to sleeping in the car park. “But there were security guards in the car park who would chase me away. I was at my wits’ end.”
The student finally got some respite from the weather and the insects after he approached Apple Daily, which linked him up with the Guangdong ETO and the federation’s service center. Local authorities agreed to arrange a vacant apartment on the estate as free temporary accommodation for Chow to remain until the lockdown was lifted.
“It’s absolutely pouring outside today. Now I have a roof over my head and that feels so much better,” he said.
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