Story By: John Feng, Sub-Editor:  Joseph Golder, Agency: Asia Wire Report

AsiaWire / Xiaoyuan Zixunjun

This footage – seen nearly 18 million times online – shows staff at a Chinese university throwing students’ belongings out of dormitories while converting their rooms into emergency isolation wards.

As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases grows, at least 13 universities in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak in China’s central province of Hubei, have been ordered to convert student accommodation into quarantine quarters.

The requisition order came from the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention on 7th February, leaving university staff across the locked-down city scrambling to convert already occupied rooms into medical treatment or isolation units.

Many of the rooms remained unoccupied during the winter holiday period, with students returning home for Chinese New Year but finding themselves unable to come back due to Wuhan being put on lockdown and the holiday period being indefinitely extended to help prevent the spread of the highly infective respiratory disease.

While most of the universities were reportedly able to take care of their students’ belongings, gathering and labelling them so as not to damage or lose them, one school came under fire and has since apologised for its handling of personal items.

Images from Wuhan Vocational College of Software and Engineering show students’ belongings strewn across the central courtyard of the dormitory building.

Clothing and other items such as books and storage boxes were reportedly hurled from corridors as staff were ordered to clear out hundreds of rooms and create more than 1,000 free beds for emergency use.

The university, whose students are still unable to return to collect their personal items, said it was sorry for the “inappropriate” way it carried out the government requisition order.

It would compensate students for any lost or damaged items, the apology on 9th February said.

Students said they were in general understanding of the requisition order itself but could not accept the school’s handling of their belongings.

Student ‘Zhangdezhu’ commented: “It’s not that we don’t understand the need for the school to be requisitioned. We just cannot understand why all our personal belongings had to be discarded. My roommates and I have lost several thousand yuan….”

‘Jiyexing’ added: “We paid a fee to live there, and we paid for all those items. The school is far to ‘generous’ in the way it freed up our rooms.”

According to the requisition order by the Wuhan CDC, the rooms are to house confirmed coronavirus patients, who appear to have nowhere else to turn as case number surge despite the creation of several temporary hospitals.

The killer disease has so far claimed the lives of 1,016 people in mainland China, infecting over 42,600.

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