Foreigners help contain COVID-19 resurgence in Suzhou

2022-02-23 17:51:00

As Suzhou is battling a COVID-19 resurgence, many expats have made active efforts to support the pandemic response on the frontline.

There are nearly 30,000 expatriates living, working and studying in the city, a manufacturing and export hub in East China's Jiangsu Province.

A US teacher at the Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, a joint venture from the two universities in Suzhou, has paid close attention to official announcements and updates. She led a team to translate information from Chinese into English and share it with the expat community in a timely fashion. At a nucleic acid testing site, she also helped foreigners navigate the process, answer their questions about restriction measures, and assisted the recording of information.

At a testing site in Chengbang Huayuan community in Suzhou Industrial Park, a couple from the US volunteered to remind expats to keep social distance and get health code ready. They also helped the community staff to maintain order and provided advice and translation to foreigners.

The couple has lived in the compound for a long time. At the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, they were also volunteers playing an active role, such as sharing the information with expats and delivering essential supplies to other residents. They see the community their own home and other residents their family members who are always ready to lend a helping hand. They also say they are foreigners to the city but not outsiders.

A South African teacher at Soochow Foreign Language School immediately volunteered to offer online courses after the COVID-19 resurgence. He said, as everyone is trying to combat the pandemic, he wants to make his effort too and hopes students will return to school soon.

Tang Dongyun, deputy head of immigration management of Kunshan Public Security Bureau, hailed the engagement of those foreign volunteers in the pandemic fight as a good attempt to modernize the social governance system and capacity. Such efforts show the participation of expats in China’s development, who help with dispute resolution, communication, contact, information collection, and language translation.