In Beijing, robots attend to quarantined hotel guests

In Beijing, robots deliver water bottles, meals and packages to quarantined hotel guests.

Robots delivering meals, ghostly figures in hazmat suits and cameras pointed at front doors: China’s methods to enforce coronavirus quarantines have looked like a sci-fi dystopia for legions of people. Authorities have taken drastic steps to ensure that people do not break isolation rules after China largely tamed the virus that had paralysed the country for months.

With cases imported from abroad threatening to unravel China’s progress, travellers arriving from overseas have been required to stay home or in designated hotels for 14 days.