This afternoon, February 2, I just had to ask the head of the temporary representative board of the building (an apartment building in Linh Dam peninsula, Hoang Mai district, Hanoi) to convene a meeting with the floor leaders to clarify information: in How many Chinese people live in your building? Have they just returned from the epidemic area? Is your health good, and do the authorities know to control the risk of Corona virus infection (if any)?
It should be added that, I had to do this after I could not find a satisfactory answer, why should I do it from the area police and the Head of the building.
I don’t worry when there are Chinese people living in the same building, but the problem is whether they (Chinese neighbors) have returned to their hometown for the New Year, have returned, and what state of health they are back in needs to be understood in the context of the current epidemic. Because from the story of the American overseas Vietnamese – who has just been said to be the 7th case of Corona virus infection in Vietnam, it is impossible to be subjective. This 73-year-old American overseas Vietnamese, although only transited in Wuhan for 2 hours on the way home during the Tet holiday, was infected in time and was discovered after more than 10 days after interacting with many other people.
Back to the story of our apartment building. The kind announcement and the subsequent reactions of the residents suddenly made me also… worried. Because I still believe that the management of residence with ordinary foreigners has been tight, for Chinese people in the context of the corona epidemic that broke out from China, it must be managed even more closely.
So I think, surely, the information about how many Chinese people are in the building, which room they live in, rent or buy a house (living with a spouse) has been well grasped by the authorities.
Yet our first and foremost question to the local government regarding the most recent list of Chinese people living in the building remained unanswered.
After hearing the announcement on the loudspeaker in the morning, a young mother immediately posted the status “5 crying faces huhu” with the status line: “I just heard on the loudspeaker, there is a Chinese person from the epidemic area to reside in court, asking to report to follow up”.
Another even wrote: “Speaking like that is really… peeing on my pants”.
But the most ominous are the comments: before the New Year, I still met Chinese people in the elevator, I don’t know if they still exist? Then “from the epidemic area, you have to quarantine, right?!”; or “The 36th floor has a Chinese husband, H., I wonder if he lives in the building now?!”…
In particular, some residents also confirmed that they had reported to the Management Board and the police before but were not interested, and now they were called down by their superiors to exhort.
However, from the story in the apartment building where I live, I can feel everyone’s anxiety, but rarely see any “drastic”, especially those who are called responsible.
Telling this story, I also hope that in other places, there are no more “announcements to find Chinese people” that are broadcast through public speakers like that, making residents panic and bewildered.