It’s a thing; “quarantine trash”. No, that’s not unsavory people locked in hotel rooms; it’s the rubbish emerging from the homes of those undergoing home isolation. As to the good news, today’s numbers reveal hope, while the nightmare of testing appears to be receding.
The shutdowns seem to have stopped. At ground zero, Jiangning District, shops and restaurants today continue to remain open, presumably in an effort to not completely strangle the economy. Not that they have many customers; they’re all at home, “working online”.
And with the news of just eight new COVID-positive cases in Nanjing yesterday, there are fresh hopes that those shops and restaurants can stay that way, that we may already be over the worst. For the record, that’s now a total of 69 cases in Nanjing.
There may not be any more closures of various types of businesses (yet), but that hasn’t stopped checks on them by police looking for “epidemic-related violations”. Between 10 and 17 March, the city’s public security organs had investigated and dealt with 31 such cases and punished 32 people.
Among their offences, there were few surprises. Yes, those gambling dens are in trouble again. On 14 March, a 42-year-old man in Jiangning failed to suspend the business of his chess and card room, providing for four other men to continue their gambling. Police nabbed all five, reports The Paper.
On the same day in Lishui District, police picked up two more men for the same offence, while in Jiangbei New Area, a 43-year-old woman who runs a foot-therapy business has been fined for continuing to operate during the epidemic.
Elsewhere, on the testing front, many parts of the city are only conducting NATs in select parts; large residential communities and areas with concentrated office space. Furthermore, The Nanjinger is increasingly hearing reports of there in fact being little pressure to perform more than just one test. That’s a huge change from last summer when the entire city was repeatedly tested.
Whether that’s an acceptance by the authorities that the populace might revolt at any time if subjugated to test after test, or at the advice of scientists, the point is moot. Either way, the focus appears to have moved to high-risk points of transmission.
Take that trash for example, our lead story in today’s COVID coverage from The Nanjinger.
The concern is the chance (however slim) that the rubbish of those in home quarantine could be a source of virus transmission. Hence urban management on the islet of Bagua Zhou in Nanjing’s Qixia District are doing something about it, reported the Yangtze Evening News yesterday, 17 March.
Special vehicles and personnel have been brought in to deal with the problem, while nine centralised collection points have been set up across the islet. Quarantining households’ rubbish shall then be transported from those points directly to a domestic waste disposal plant for timely incineration, minimising any and all kind of contact between those isolated and the outside world.
Bins utilised for the purpose then get a good disinfecting, being just as deserving as all kinds of trash.
