China SWAT team practices using nets to nab COVID-19 victim

China SWAT team practices using nets to nab COVID-19 victim

TONGBAI COUNTY, CHINA — China's got a new tool to take down uncooperative citizens suspected of being infected with you-know-what: fishing nets.

According to Storyful, footage of a mock drill was uploaded to Weibo by the Tongbai County Municipal Public Security Bureau.

The staged incident starts off with a masked driver being given a temperature check at a checkpoint in Henan province.

After presumably failing the temp check, two SWAT team members, one of whom is carrying a riot shield, are called in.

They ask the man to get out of the vehicle and cooperate with the investigation, but he refuses and begins to drive off.

He's subsequently stopped by a police van, and when he gets out and strips off his face mask, more SWAT team members descend and pull him in with a net over the head.

The man is restrained, and the net over is head quickly replaced by what appears to be a black bag.

After he's taken away, those at the scene are sprayed down with disinfectant.

In a post accompanying the video, the Tongbai security bureau wrote that the armed exercises were conducted in order "to win the epidemic defense." Since Henan borders Hubei province, whose capital Wuhan is the epicenter of the outbreak, Sky News reports that authorities are on particularly high alert.