The cause of that accident is still under investigation, Lin said. It is not yet clear why a quarantine bus would start after midnight to take people to another city for quarantine. China’s transportation regulation prohibits long-distance passenger buses from operating between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. Local authorities are under pressure to achieve the ‘zero Covid’ target. The Guiyang Evening Paper reported on Saturday that the city had prepared 20 buses and 40 bus drivers to transport close contacts of Covid patients to other cities. And as of Saturday, the city had transferred more than 7,000 people to other cities and nearly 3,000 more were waiting to be bussed out of Guiyang. News of the deaths sparked a huge outcry on Chinese social media, with many questioning the country’s increasingly strict zero-Covid policy. Many posts of the accident published by state media have barred people from commenting, and search results for Guizhou on Chinese social media appear to have been filtered. Guizhou province has stepped up Covid-19 testing and quarantine measures due to its outbreak. The province reported 712 new cases on Saturday, more than any other province combined, according to China’s National Health Commission.
