to an unarmed 21 year-old attempting to snatch his gun. On 14 November, an elderly man named Luo Changqing died from a head injury which he had sustained the previous day during a confrontation between two groups of anti-government protesters and residents in Sheung Shui. For the first time, during a standoff on 11 November, police shot numerous rounds of tear gas, sponge grenades and rubber bullets into the campuses of universities, while protesters threw bricks and petrol bombs in response. Student protesters from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) confronted the police for two consecutive days. After the conflict, protesters briefly occupied several universities. A major conflict between protesters and police took place in Hung Hom on 17 November after protesters took control of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and blockaded the Cross-Harbour Tunnel. Thus began the siege of PolyU by police which ended with them storming onto the campus and arresting several protesters and volunteer medics in the early morning of 18 November. Electoral landslide and COVID-19 The 24 November 2019 District Council election, considered a referendum on the government and the protests, attracted a record high voter turnout. The results saw the pro-democracy camp win by a landslide, with the pro-Beijing camp suffering their greatest electoral defeat in Hong Kong's history. The unprecedented electoral success of the pro-democracy voters, the mass arrests during the PolyU siege, and faster response by police contributed to a decrease in the intensity and frequency of the protests in December 2019 and January 2020. Despite this, the CHRF organised two marches to maintain pressure on the government on 8 December 2019 and 1 January 2020. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China caused the number of large-scale rallies to dwindle further because of fears that they might facilitate the spread of the virus. Despite this, the pro-democratic movement's tactics were repurposed to pressure the government to take stronger actions to safeguard public health in the face of the pandemic's outbreak in Hong Kong. As the COVID-19 crisis escalated in February and March 2020, the scale of the protests dwindled further. Police have used COVID-19 laws banning groups of more than four, for example, to disperse protesters. On 18 April, police arrested 15 pro-democracy activists including Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee and Margaret Ng for their activities in 2019, drawing international condemnation. Implementation of the national security law On 21