New Covid-19 outbreaks in China reopen pet owners’ wounds, but public pressure eases some lockdown restrictions
- During early pandemic quarantines, many pet owners in China were forced to leave their pets alone at home or send them into the wild
- Following public pressure, Daxing district in Beijing adjusted measures to allow pets to be moved to hotels with their owners
Some pets were abandoned, stranded and left to starve to death when a sudden lockdown was imposed on central Wuhan in January last year and residents were taken away to quarantine or forbidden to return to their homes.
New Covid-19 outbreaks in China have reopened the wounds of pet-owners, with some complaining they were asked to leave their pets alone at home or send them into the wild.
“The neighbourhood community notified us to go to a hotel for central quarantine and refused to let me take my two cats to quarantine together,” said a Beijing internet user on Weibo in late January.
The woman lives in a residential area in Beijing’s Daxing district, where residents were moved to hotels for quarantine after Covid-19 outbreaks. “They told us to set the cats free in the wild,” the woman wrote. “We cooperated with epidemic control, but please also take into consideration the life of pets.”
Many online readers sympathised with the woman and criticised the way the situation had been handled. “It’s been a year and why can’t the government think of a protocol to deal with pets?” said one Weibo user.