Timothée, a French expatriate in China, has been stranded for several days in Kashgar, in the Xinjiang region, in the far west of the country. This is where he decided to spend his vacation, but now he is confined there. Indeed, a case of Covid-19 has been detected… more than 1,500 kilometers away.
Due to the zero covid policy implemented by Beijing, it is the entire province of Xinjiang, whose area is almost three times that of France, which is in quarantine.
“I have no visibility of when I can go out”
Therefore, every day, the authorities test the entire population of Kashgar, although no cases have been detected in the vicinity. From his hotel room that has become his home, Timothée has no information.
“They told us, at the beginning, that you have to wait seven days for negatives and they will give you permission to leave. Now I’m more than eight days away, I still don’t have permission. I have no visibility of when I can get out,” she laments to BFMTV.
A strategy that must continue
Police told him the “blockade” was continuing “until further notice.” Meanwhile, food and water are rationed. “We don’t have enough to eat, it’s very basic, very limited. Let’s say that if it’s for a few days, it may be fine, but if it’s for weeks, it’s complicated, ”says Thimothée.
Contacted by the young man, the French authorities in China say they are powerless to help him.
And for him as for the other inhabitants of the country, the situation should not improve. Indeed, a Chinese state-run newspaper hinted in an editorial on Wednesday that the Asian giant will not back down from its strict zero-Covid strategy, for the fourth time this week and four days before the crucial Communist Party congress.
Source: BFM TV
