New measures help villagers cope with COVID-19

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After seeing the soaring number of infections, governments from central to grassroots level, along with medical experts, gave priority to epidemic control work in Beicai. They drew up plans to stabilize the situation with more-targeted measures, paying extra attention to urban villages.

As the infection rate in Lianqin remained high in the middle of last month, the anti-epidemic team took villagers to centralized quarantine sites on the evening of April 16, enabling the entire village to be thoroughly disinfected.

Nie, who comes from Shandong province, has worked in Shanghai for eight years. He said his landlord told him that villagers with negative nucleic acid test results would be sent to quarantine sites, while positive cases and their close contacts in Lianqin would be transferred to designated hospitals, makeshift facilities, or would receive medical treatment in a cordoned-off area of the village.

"I decided to take necessities and valuables to the quarantine hotel with my wife, mother and 9-month-old child that evening, because half my neighbors were found to be infected at that time," he said, adding that he had worries about his family becoming infected.

After the villagers left home, a disinfection team from Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, spent five days thoroughly sanitizing Lianqin.

"The disinfection work was a great relief, and I now feel safer," Nie said.