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Chinese city of Guangzhou to build giant Covid-19 quarantine facility with 5,000 spaces for international travellers
- Leading respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan says local hotels are not equipped to stop the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant
- Zhong says Guangdong province has been made China’s main portal to receive and quarantine those entering the country
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The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou is planning to build a massive quarantine complex for international travellers and local residents from high-risk areas because local hotels cannot cope with highly transmissible Covid-19 mutations such as the Delta variant, according to leading respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan.
“There will be 5,000 isolated spaces and the people there will be isolated according to strict rules to make sure they do not infect each other,” Zhong told a group interview on Friday.
Zhong said that after observing the transmissibility of the Delta variant in Guangdong province during the past month, he was convinced that using hotels as quarantine facilities would not be enough to stop the spread of the disease given it was a lot more transmissible than other pre-existing variants.
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The mutations of the coronavirus also mean that other transmissible variants may also emerge in future.
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“In the long term, Guangzhou and Shenzhen must build these kinds of facilities. Otherwise when there are lots of cases in the future and we have to quarantine them in hotels, it will affect the economy and we cannot isolate them in a real sense.”
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