A man convinced he had Covid sealed himself inside his own car for 10 hours in a makeshift quarantine facility.
The unnamed Beijing resident had decorators over at his place on Tuesday morning when he was informed one or more of them had tested positive for coronavirus.
He then went outside, got into his white coupe car and did not budge until 10pm that evening - never even bothering to take a test.
"I knew my chances of being infected are very high, so I tried to avoid contact with anyone to avoid troubles with others," the cautious man later explained.
"Immediately after I knew about this, I stayed in my car without even opening the window. That was what I should do for public health."
Despite his isolation being at least initially self-imposed, photos taken at the scene show his car had been sealed shut from the outside with an official Covid-19 quarantine notice. He has not addressed who put the tape around the vehicle given he was stuck inside.
At about 5pm he got hungry and ordered KFC, but even then didn't exit the car.
"It was a contact-free delivery," he said.
"The delivery man put my food by the roadside and I went to pick it up after he left."
It's not clear whether he has been officially tested for the virus yet.
State agency China News Service reported on the man's bizarre situation in an apparent effort to rally other Beijing residents to take similar precautions should they be exposed to Covid-19.
China's major cities have been forced into the strict lockdown measures seen in the pandemic to date, with citizens in Shanghai fenced into their own homes in an attempt to contain potential positive cases.
Last week residents woke up to green fences that had been installed by authorities overnight to restrict people's movement as the city faces its worst coronavirus surge since the pandemic began.
Those with fences outside their homes - in a sealed area - could not leave their properties whether or not they had the virus.
Pictures of officers in white hazmat suits patrolling the city and closing off certain areas with green fencing were shared wildly on social media.
Shanghai's 25 million residents have now been locked in for weeks due to the surge in Covid cases, although this weekend some restrictions were finally loosened after a second day of zero cases outside quarantine areas.
The extremely strict lockdown has already pushed Shanghai's citizens to their limits, as babies and young children have been separated from their parents under current rules.
The rules are part of China's zero-Covid policy, which aims to eradicate the virus from the country entirely.
Levels of infections across the country stayed quite low at the beginning of the pandemic, but cases have increased as variants have become more transmissible.
