Anxious Chinese urge kin to leave virus-hit Europe

BEIJING: Under pressure from anxious parents, Chinese citizens living in virus-hit Europe are flocking back home, with some even flying on private jets to escape the spiralling number of infections overseas.

With new domestic coronavirus cases falling to zero in China, the country where the disease first emerged now looks like a safe haven compared to the worsening crisis abroad. Tens of thousands of students and professionals, as well as footballers from first division teams training abroad, are coming home. But their return is fraught with difficulty: flights are expensive and infrequent, there have been infection cases on planes and 14 days in quarantine — generally in a hotel at the returnee´s expense — is mandatory upon arrival. “My parents were very worried, they called me every day,” said Zhao Yidong, a 29-year-old IT consultant who returned from France. “I had three weeks left in France but with Trump closing the American borders to people coming from Europe, I was afraid that China would also block its (borders) to them too,” he told AFP by phone from a two-star hotel in the eastern city of Yangzhou, where he has been quarantined. “So I preferred to return earlier. When he arrived in Shanghai, he underwent medical checks, before being taken to the hotel by authorities. “Morale is very good. I have nothing to complain about: every day, a doctor examines us and the employees drop three full meals outside the door for us,” he said. The government pays for half his stay, while the rest is at his expense: 1,680 yuan ($236) for 14 nights. “I fully applaud this quarantine. I prefer this than risk infecting my family.

But having been victims of racism in Europe, where they were considered as potential carriers of the virus at the start of the outbreak, some of these Chinese returnees must now deal with distrust among their compatriots. On social networks, there has been criticism of “irresponsible” people who have brought the virus back to China, where more than 200 imported cases have already been identified. This hostility did not deter Yang Qingyun, 28, a student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, from coming home. “I had a feeling that the epidemic would explode in Germany. Most Germans were not taking the disease seriously and I was afraid that my daughter would be infected,” she told AFP from the northern province of Shanxi, where she is in home quarantine.