Uproar over deadly bus crash tied to zero-Covid measures

A bus crash that killed 27 people has sparked online outrage, with many web users blaming the tragedy on authorities who move healthy people out of Covid-hit areas to achieve zero infection.

The crash took place on a highway in Guizhou province when the vehicle carrying 47 people in total "flipped onto its side," Sandu county police said.

The remaining 20 people were being treated for injuries and emergency responders were dispatched to the scene, police added, without providing any more details.

The accident happened in Qiannan prefecture - a poor, remote and mountainous part of Guizhou, home to several ethnic minorities.

Two social media posts, which have since been deleted, by the China Road Network monitoring service said the accident occurred at around 2.40am on Saturday, according to screenshots circulating on Weibo.

Social media users angrily demanded why a passenger bus was traveling down a highway in the early hours of the morning, when many major roads in the province have been closed to regular traffic.

It is said all 47 passengers were close contacts of one patient and that they all tested negative in PCR tests. But they were still forced to move to quarantine facilities in other cities because Guiyang was aiming to achieve zero infection by today.

Web users slammed authorities for "ignoring citizens' safety in order to achieve zero infection."

They also criticized the government for imposing excessive Covid measures while the rest of the world is resuming normality.

"It's ironic that only two people died from Covid in Guizhou over the past three years, while 27 people died from the anti-epidemic measures in this accident," a web user said.

One hundred toll stations are shuttered in Guizhou because of restrictions and long-distance passenger journeys across China are banned from running between 2am and 5am.

Guizhou is in the midst of a Covid outbreak that has seen over 900 new infections in the past two days alone.