Chinese officials offer $700 bounty for anyone who can 'catch' a migrant crossing the border

In the last months, reported new coronavirus infections in China have been falling.

But authorities are worried about a second outbreak of the coronavirus as life starts to get back to normal in some provinces.

According to Al Jazeera, a China's northeastern border with Russia is seeing cases of coronavirus increasing particularly rapidly.

One such province is Heilongjiang, in the northeastern part of China, where local government has set up a command centre and a hotline, offering 3,000 yuan ($424US) for information which could lead to the capture of anyone crossing the border illegally.

For a resident of Heilongjiang, who can actually find someone crossing the border, the bounty is 5,000 yuan ($707).

Authorities from China have said that 79 of the imported cases in China originated from crossing the Russian border. Heilongjiang shares a 2,600-mile border with Russia and has set up a range of other measures to try and stave increasing damage from Covid-19, as a second wave has started to rise in some provinces.

Chinese health officials have said that out of 89 new cases of Covid-19 in China, 79 of them are Chinese citizens returning from Russia. Second waves of Covid-19 infections are rising around China and Singapore, as some countries in Europe start to emerge out of lockdown.

This is not the first time that authorities in China have offered cash rewards as an incentive to their citizens during the pandemic. Authorities were offering 1,000 yuan ($141) to anyone who could report someone they knew was returning from Wuhan.

Heilongjiang government officials had threatened the death penalty for anyone who was thought to be ‘deliberately spreading the virus’.

Alongside bounties and hotlines, some cities in China are starting to enforce 28-day quarantine periods for people who are returning from abroad.