Forget surgical masks.
Video shows a Chinese woman’s unorthodox way of protecting herself from the coronavirus epidemic — using a remote-controlled car to go food shopping around her hometown in Shandong province.
Chen Tao didn’t have to leave home to take the vehicle for a spin Sunday, using the car’s two cameras and remote controls to navigate it to a shop in the city of Jinan to collect steamed buns, according to Newsflare.
Chen told the news service she can drive the vehicle as far as half a mile, allowing her to easily make it to the store.
She said she put her phone number on the car — which has a box hitched to the back for groceries — so the shop owner can call her to complete the transaction.
Footage from the shopping spree showed the vehicle roll up to a store, where she uses a loudspeaker on the car to speak to a security guard.
“Can you please help me call the shop owner?” Chen can be heard saying in Chinese.
The guard replies, “I will fill the box up, OK? I put [the steamed buns] at the back.”
The footage emerged after Shandong province urged companies to stop working until Feb. 10 to prevent the spread of the flu-like virus.
The death toll from the virus — which emerged last month in Wuhan — had climbed to 490 as of Wednesday, officials said.



