As COVID-19 cases sweep across the globe, so too are policy changes meant to counteract the spread of the disease. China, in particular, has spent the last three months combating the spread of the virus, and is now taking measures to prevent the possibility of a second wave of the virus hitting the nation.
According to Beijing News, as of Mar 18, there were 64 imported cases in Beijing, and a full 27, or 40 percent, of them are students who flew into the city from the following destinations:
- Spain: 20 cases
- Italy: 17 cases
- UK: 13 cases
- US: 3 cases
- Hungary: 3 cases
- Iran: 3 cases
- Austria: 2 cases
- Thailand: 1 case
- Brazil: 1 case
- Luxembourg: 1 case
Beijing has enacted policies such as requiring everyone who arrives from overseas to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine in specific hotels across Beijing, and requiring some flights destined for the Capital to stop by neighboring cities first, in order to complete a quarantine before flying to their final destination.
Meanwhile, with more and more schools worldwide beginning to close their campuses, the tens of thousands of Chinese students who study overseas are finding that their host families – many of whom are retirees and at a greater risk to infection – have refused to provide boarding, leaving those students stranded, as they struggle to make the journey back to China.
In the UK alone, 15,000 Chinese students from middle to high school rely on campus housing or a host family during their stay. Unfortunately however, as of Friday, Britain had closed all schools across the country. Despite their best efforts to get airline tickets home, many of the students have been unable to, citing no available tickets until April, at the earliest, and airline cancellations for unaccompanied minors.
Likewise, parents are growing increasingly worried about the wellbeing of their children abroad. As Caixin Global reports, “There are more than 160 parents of underage students studying in the UK who wrote to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and Chinese Embassy in the UK, pleading for the consular to protect their children amid the COVID-19 outbreak.”
Speaking to CCTV, Chinese Ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming said that the embassy is “working actively with domestic authorities to see if we can add temporary commercial flights or charter flights,” back to the mainland.
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