Coronavirus: Police barricade screaming woman in her home with iron bars to contain spread of Wuhan disease
Police officials in China reportedly used iron bars to barricade a screaming woman inside her home in an attempt to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus that has infected over 14,000 people in the country alone and claimed at least 360 lives.
Authorities were filmed locking the woman in her apartment in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, stopping her family from leaving the house.
Reports state that police even put up a sign, warning neighbors to not have any contact with the people who live inside and "stay away" because they had recently returned from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
A clip taken of the officers showed masked men dressed in black, installing metal bars over the doors and windows of the woman's house.
In the video, posted on social media on Thursday, a woman can be heard screaming as uniformed officers locked her inside. Nearly seven officers could be seen in the clip working to barricade the family as one of them said, "Don't come out." A sign stuck next to the door read: "This family came back from Wuhan. Stay away, no contact."
(Getty Images)
Similar scenes around China were captured in multiple videos posted online, where authorities locked potentially infected families in their homes. One video, believed to have been taken in Beijing, showed authorities nailing wooden planks across an apartment door.
A Chinese human rights activist, Fengsuo Zhou, released a statement, saying he had seen such videos coming from at least four different regions across the country, all of them showing people being locked inside their homes.
He added that the central government had ordered the lockdowns in an attempt to cover up criticism that they were too slow to act to curb the outbreak.
"People are feeling desperate and angry," Zhou told Metro.co.uk. "The Chinese government is more focused on censorship than public welfare because they know their credibility is challenged. They have covered up the crucial information for too long. Doctors were censured by police for talking about the pandemic one month ago."
The new coronavirus, termed as “2019-nCoV, has reached nearly 24 countries across the world, with China being the one severely affected. Multiple cities in the country have been put on lockdown, with residents only allowed to leave their homes to buy food and face masks.