xi's moments
Home | Society

Teacher flies to US after COVID-19 row

By Cui Jia | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2021-09-09 09:19

Emily O'Dell, a former teacher at a university in Sichuan province, has left China after her contract was terminated for refusing to cooperate with COVID-19 control measures and spreading rumors online, media reports said.

O'Dell, a United States citizen who used to teach at the Pittsburgh Institute at Sichuan University in Chengdu, left a series of comments on Twitter from Aug 4 because she wasn't happy about the local COVID-19 control measures when she traveled to Danba county in Sichuan's Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture.

Wu Jialin, a police officer from Danba, said that O'Dell arrived in the county on July 20 and lived in a homestay hotel. On July 27, there was a resurgence of COVID-19 in Sichuan, so the COVID-19 control teams had to screen people traveling from high-risk areas, the Global Times reported on Tuesday.

According to Sichuan health authorities, five confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported in Chengdu, Sichuan's provincial capital, on July 27-two of them imported and three locally transmitted.

"On Aug 4, we asked her to show her health code and cooperate with us in taking her temperature," Wu said. "According to local prevention measures, if she did not have a nucleic acid report, we needed to persuade her to return to where she came from. But she refused to show us the health code."

He said that when COVID-19 control officers asked O'Dell to show them her health code, she became emotional and cried and screamed. No police officer had taken any coercive measures against her and there was no physical contact, Wu said.

O'Dell described the police officers as "creepy" in later tweets, and said "maybe America should round up all the Chinese in America, kick them out of all hotels". She also asked people to call the US Embassy for help because she had been "abducted".

Due to her offensive remarks and spreading rumors on social media, the police in Danba and Chengdu arraigned O'Dell, during which time she admitted to spreading rumors, Wu added.

Global Times reported that the Pittsburgh Institute at Sichuan University held a meeting on Aug 12 and decided that O'Dell had severely violated the university's code of conduct for teachers with her remarks and the negative impact the incident had brought. The institute said it had zero tolerance for such behavior and had decided to terminate her contract. O'Dell took a plane from Shanghai to San Francisco on Sept 2.

According to China's Exit and Entry Administration Law, "where foreigners engage in activities not corresponding to the purposes of stay or residence, or otherwise violate the laws or regulations of China, which makes them no longer eligible to stay or reside in China, they may be ordered to exit China within a time limit".

Global Edition
BACK TO THE TOP
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349