Thousands of high school students in China’s central Henan Province have been isolated since early October in makeshift quarantine facilities, such as schools, amid a recent wave of COVID-19 in the province.
Multiple counties in Henan, including Bo’ai county, Yucheng county, and Yanling county, have locked down their residents and high school students, although they haven’t disclosed how many have tested positive for COVID-19, according to residents.
Students share rooms with fellow students who test positive for COVID-19, and there is a lack of water, proper food, medicines, clothing, and bedding during dropping temperatures.
The local authorities haven’t informed worried parents of the whereabouts of students, and some adults have also been locked down.
Authorities ‘Risking Children’s Lives’: Mother
Li Mei (a pseudonym), whose son is a student at the No. 1 Senior Middle School of Yanling county, Xuchang city, Henan Province, said that the pandemic was more serious than the local authorities had disclosed.Chinese middle schooling consists of three years of junior middle school and three years of senior middle school, and middle school students are aged between 12 and 18.
When speaking with the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on Nov. 2, Li said that the county authorities launched isolation measures more than half a month ago, although they kept reporting zero positive COVID-19 cases.
“We don’t know if the county government covered up the pandemic numbers, or if the higher level authorities altered them,” Li said.
According to Li, more than 1,000 students at the middle school tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 10,000 residents in the county tested positive for the disease.
Li’s son was among those locked down on the campus. Li said that her son developed a high fever twice and felt dizzy, but he wasn’t informed of his testing results. The students had to drink tap water, which isn’t potable in some regions of China, although there were piles of bottled water at the entrance of the school.
“There were no medical staff at the isolated school, although the government issued notices that a medical team was sent to the school. But the children there didn’t see any medical professional,” Li said, adding that only one student had a mobile phone, which was the only communication channel for the students locked down in the school.
“We volunteered to go to the school to take care of the students, but the county government didn’t allow us to go. Maybe they are afraid that we adults will disclose the true situation in the school,” Li said angrily. “They are risking children’s lives [for their political career]!”
Yanling has a population of 547,411 and is a comparatively small county in China. Li said that the county didn’t have enough medical professionals to deal with the outbreak.
A woman who claimed to be the mother of a student of the middle school uploaded a video online at 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 1, speaking up for her child and all the other students locked down by Yanling No. 1 Senior Middle School.
The anonymous mother said she was locked down in a warehouse in Zhengzhou city, in the heart of Henan Province. She said that she was on the brink of collapsing when she watched heart-wrenching videos and posts online about the poor conditions of the students locked down in the school. She asked everyone who saw her video to repost it and let more people see it, “to help those poor and helpless children.”
Xuchang, the city that oversees Yanling, reported a total of 46 COVID-19 patients from Nov. 1 to 6, with only one being symptomatic and the remaining being asymptomatic.
A user of Weibo, a Twitter-like Chinese social media platform, wrote that there were many isolation facilities in the small county and that many students in the No. 1 Senior Middle School had a fever.
“My sister called me and told me she had a high fever. The only thing I could do was to tell her to drink more water. But she said that there was only one bottle of water left for the eight students in her dorm,” the Weibo user wrote.
Another user said that many residences were locked with iron bars by the local authorities from the outside. “Please help repost and make the topic [of the Yanling pandemic] trend to get more attention!” the user wrote.
Thousands of Students Locked Down in Other Counties
Liu Fang (a pseudonym) is a resident of Bo’ai county, Jiaozuo city, Henan Province. Her two children are students at the No. 1 Middle School of Bo’ai.“The school management told us that there were only two positive cases on Oct. 30, but my children said what their teachers said was not true and that half of the students were infected [by COVID-19],” Liu told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times on Nov. 2.
The middle school has more than 6,000 students, and there was a COVID-19 outbreak at the school on Oct. 23, according to Liu. But the local authorities transferred students to different isolation facilities without notifying the parents, Liu said.
“Our children only brought some light clothes when they went back to school on Oct. 2, but we are not allowed to deliver warm clothing for them,” Liu said, adding that she wasn’t able to get in touch with her children.
“Let us take our children home; we are willing to be quarantined together with them,” Liu said.
Liu told The Epoch Times that her residence had been sealed with thick iron wires. “We have been locked down since Oct. 7,” Liu said.
Yucheng county of Shangqiu city, Henan Province, also experienced an outbreak in October, according to Wang Yan (a pseudonym), a resident of the county.
Wang’s daughter is a student at a local senior middle school, which has over 4,000 students, Wang said in a phone interview with the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times on Nov. 2.
Wang said that her daughter and two other students in the same dorm had a fever.
“The school didn’t give the students PCR tests, so we don’t know whether it’s just the flu or COVID,” Wang said.
“The school didn’t tell us anything about the outbreak. The county government only reported one positive case, which was a teacher,” Wang said.
The Epoch Times viewed the pandemic reports on the website of the Henan provincial health committee from Oct. 22 to 31 and found only Jiaozuo city reported three asymptomatic cases on Oct. 30, while the other two cities didn’t report any cases during the period.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Henan provincial health committee for comment.
