Severe flooding and heavy rains have killed at least two people in southern China and disrupted the first day of widely anticipated college entrance exams being held one month late because of the coronavirus.
The Chinese language exam in She county in southern Anhui province was canceled after only 500 of the 2,000 students had reached the exam site by 10 a.m. Tuesday, the Huangshan city government said.
More than 10 million students were slated to take the exams nationwide in what was described as the country's largest collective event since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place in January.
Anhui and neighboring Hubei province, the epicenter of the pandemic in China, appeared to be the hardest hit by the rain.
Nearly 30,000 people were evacuated in Hubei's Huanggang city after water started seeping from a reservoir, the China News Service reported. The reservoir has been reinforced and a channel dug to release flood water.
Two people died in Hubei and nearly 1 million have been affected in the province by the flooding, the state-owned news service said.
Anhui raised its emergency flood response to the second-highest level, calling the situation grave as water rose above warning levels at 19 rivers, five lakes and more than 400 reservoirs.
Farther west, a public bus fell into a reservoir in Anshun city in Guizhou province, authorities said. They didn't say whether the accident was weather-related.
Rescuers were searching for an unknown number of missing passengers after the bus was hauled out of the water, the Anshun government said. Eighteen people were sent to hospitals with injuries. The passengers included students taking the university entrance exam.
More than 120 people have died or are missing in seasonal flooding that hits southern China every year. The bodies of four people who died in a recent landslide in Sichuan province have been found, China National Radio said Tuesday.