As Chinese cities face new Covid-19 lockdowns, have lessons of 2020 been learned?
- Echoes in Hebei of measures a year ago in Wuhan, with students stranded in icy conditions and some people unable to get routine medical treatment
- Residents complain of mistakes being repeated, as countries continue to struggle to balance a speedy response with the public’s wider needs
Over 2,100 students were stranded in Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital, and the number was growing as more cities in the province went into lockdown. Universities have been told to check the status of every student and offer emergency assistance funding, the education bureau said on Tuesday.
This came after a video went viral showing students on the streets in subfreezing temperatures with nowhere to go after universities closed for the winter holiday last week. The city had stopped public transport and hotels did not have space or charged prices students could not afford, according to a report by China News Weekly.
“Authorities in Shijiazhuang did not seem to learn from the experience of Wuhan last year,” said a post shared by Xu Fuqun, the deputy editor-in-chief of Communist Party newspaper China Society News. “It is easy to make spur-of-the-moment decisions, but they don’t seem to have thought seriously about the problems that follow.”
