Bay­er fires em­ploy­ee who was spot­ted break­ing quar­an­tine in Chi­na

Amid height­ened sen­si­tiv­i­ties around so­cial dis­tanc­ing and in­creas­ing­ly tough re­stric­tions on peo­ple’s move­ment in des­per­ate at­tempts to sup­press the spread of Covid-19 around the world, Bay­er’s Chi­na di­vi­sion said it has fired an em­ploy­ee af­ter she broke quar­an­tine rules in Bei­jing.

In un­der four months since it first re­port­ed cas­es of mys­te­ri­ous pneu­mo­nia to the WHO, Chi­na has swift­ly re­brand­ed it­self as a safe haven, with im­port­ed cas­es now sur­pass­ing lo­cal trans­mis­sion. So when a video emerged of a woman who ap­peared to be de­fy­ing gov­ern­ment or­ders re­gard­ing dis­ease con­trol, it went vi­ral and drew uni­ver­sal con­dem­na­tion.

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