Villages around the epicentre of China‘s coronavirus outbreak are flocking to prevent residents from the largely quarantined Hubei Province from fleeing into their land, it has emerged.
Videos and pictures circulating on social media purport to show frightened locals living near the border of Hubei resorting to various methods – including destroying roads and using weapon-wielding guards – in a desperate bid to stop people escaping from the other side.
Six villages in the province of Hebei, which does not adjoin virus-ravaged Hubei, even started to build brick walls to barricade themselves and stop outsiders, a report revealed yesterday.
The deadly coronavirus has killed at least 133 people – all in China – and sickened at least 6,168 worldwide. It has so far been spread to 18 other countries and regions.
The intensifying outbreak has led authorities to quarantine at least 56 million people in Hubei Province, including its capital city Wuhan, and halted all means of transport going in and out of many of its cities.
Hubei is situated bang in the middle of China and surrounded by five provinces – Shaanxi, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi and Hunan – as well as one populous municipality, Chongqing.’
