What’s trending?

One woman’s tale of returning home for the Lunar New Year after multiple quarantines in 2020 is trending on Weibo this week, as families across China struggle to reunite over the holiday period due to Covid-19 restrictions.

What’s the story?

The woman, given the alias Gu in a media report on China News, spent almost 100 days of 2020 under lockdown, as a variety of different circumstances found her in close contact with confirmed positive cases of the novel coronavirus.

The Beijing-based state-owned company employee made it home to the provincial capital of neighboring Hebei province for the 2021 Spring Festival after the city was reconnected to Beijing by highspeed train just four days earlier following a month-long travel suspension. Hebei has now effectively quelled the latest outbreak of the disease which began in January.

The office worker from Hebei told China News that in the past, she would go abroad or travel within China over the Spring festival only visiting home on the second or third day of the Lunar New Year festivities. In 2020, she had travelled to Yunnan over the annual holiday and had to quarantine at home for 14 days on her return. She was then sent to a centralized quarantine facility as one member of her tour group was diagnosed with Covid-19. On being released, she then had to quarantine at her place of residence in Beijing for an extended period of 19 days when her housemate returned. She was then caught up in Beijing’s Xinfadi wholesale market outbreak in June when a courier who lived in her building was confirmed to have the disease. In one final close call with the coronavirus, Gu was with her family when the Hebei outbreak began at the start of 2021, and had to quarantine for a seventh time on her return to work in Beijing.

She told China News, a state media platform, that she now realized “home was best” at New Year. By telling everyone about her experience, she said she hoped readers would recognize the importance of doing everything possible to cut any possible transmission routes for the infection, even if that meant repeated periods of isolation.

What are people saying online?

Weibo users are astounded that someone has spent almost a third of the year in isolation due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Many comments point out that the woman worked for a state-owned company, which they say has given her the flexibility to stay away from the office for extended periods of time. “If she worked for a private company it would be a different story. Quarantining would mean her salary was cut. Then she wouldn’t be so eager to run around.”

Social media commentators also wonder why she has chosen to hide her real name in the report, if it isn’t because she has been able to take so much time off work in 2020.

Contact editor Marcus Ryder (marcusryder@caixin.com)

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