Advertisement

Chinese 'SWAT' Team Practices Taking Down 'Coronavirus Victim'

A team in China’s Henan province on February 21 practiced taking down uncooperative victims of Covid-19, or the coronavirus, in a staged incident at an official checkpoint.

Henan neighbours the Hubei province, which has been at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak.

In a video posted to Weibo and TikTok by Tongbai County’s Municipal Public Security Bureau, a mask-wearing driver can be seen being questioned by police and masked officials in the exercise.

At one point, one of the officials says, “Please get out of the vehicle to cooperate with our examination,” according to a Storyful translation of the dialogue.

The man begins to drive away as part of the exercise; however, he is stopped by a police van and surrounded by men carrying riot shields and wearing uniforms with the word SWAT written on them in English.

When the driver gets out of the car, a net is thrown over his head and then he is grabbed by several officials.

In a Weibo post accompanying the video, the Tongbai security bureau wrote: “To win the epidemic defense, Tongyang police had armed exercises.”

As of the afternoon of 24 February, more than 79,000 cases of coronavirus had been confirmed, according to Johns Hopkins CSSE. The vast majority of these had been in mainland China. Credit: Tongbai County Municipal Public Security Bureau via Storyful