Students make the most of life in lockdown

Students in Tianjin say they are enjoying their lives on campuses after being encouraged to stay in the city for Spring Festival due to a COVID-19 outbreak.

Xiao Shufan said she had learned a lot after listening to the lecture on changes in China's social stratum pattern by Zhu Guanglei, a former vice-president of Nankai University, on Sunday morning.

The doctoral student at Nankai University said that as an economics major, she usually kept to her own subject field and would ordinarily seldom study such a topic.

"It is a good choice to study calmly on the campus and consult literature in the library during the holidays," she said.

Xiao, from Shanxi province, said she plans to attend lectures given by professors and teachers in different fields to broaden her knowledge.

Nankai University plans to invite more than 20 academicians, professors and teachers in different fields to give lectures online to meet students' learning needs during the winter holidays. It was placed under closed-loop management due to the COVID-19 outbreak before the winter holiday started.

According to the city's education department, more than 56,000 students from 22 universities and colleges are staying on their campuses for the winter holidays this year due to the outbreak, which started on Jan 8.

Many universities and colleges have launched online classes to meet students' demand for study during the holidays, along with online concerts and cultural events.

Zheng Leping, a second-year undergraduate student majoring in transportation at Civil Aviation University of China, said the university's canteens, libraries and gymnasiums have been open as usual during the holidays.

He said he might exercise with classmates or use the holidays to further develop his literary and artistic talents.

Boboev Hakimbeg and Bobozoda Fozilbeg, two students from Tajikistan, chose to become volunteers at Tianjin Foreign Studies University to help the university and its teachers carry out epidemic prevention and control work among the international students on campus.

In addition to measuring body temperatures and distributing masks, they help the students order meals and offer them psychological counseling.

He Peng, an official from the Tianjin Municipal Health Commission, said the city reported 80 new confirmed cases of locally transmitted COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing its total in the latest outbreak to 294 patients, plus 22 asymptomatic carriers.

Zhang Boli, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told China Central Television on Sunday that Tianjin would have "zero cases" of COVID-19 within a short time.

"The first stage is to achieve the goal of zero transmission in communities outside quarantine," he said. "The second is to have no new cases detected within quarantine sites and areas sealed off for stricter management.

"When we have achieved that goal, which indicates the epidemic has been brought under basic control in Tianjin, the next step is to cure the patients."

Zhang urged all people, including students, who have left Tianjin recently to report to the authorities in their hometowns, undergo nucleic acid tests and put themselves in quarantine if they develop symptoms to prevent the novel coronavirus from spreading outside the city.