Last week, Covid-related images provoked outrage on Chinese social media: one showed a young woman kneeling on the ground with her hands tied behind her back after she and a friend had picked up a takeaway meal without first donning masks. Neither had Covid, neither was even a close contact, but both had been detained by the increasingly resented “big whites”, the hazmat-suited zero-Covid enforcers who bound the women’s hands and left them kneeling in the street, an exercise in humiliation that provoked indignation among China’s netizens. Meanwhile, Tianxiacheng community,…
Tag: Infectious diseases
Covid lockdown protests break out in western China after deadly fire
Protests have broken out in China’s far western Xinjiang region, with crowds shouting at hazmat-suited guards after a deadly fire triggered anger over their prolonged Covid-19 lockdown as nationwide infections set another record. Crowds chanted “End the lockdown“, pumping their fists in the air as they walked down a street, according to videos circulated on Chinese social media on Friday night. Reuters verified the footage was published from the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi. Videos showed people in a plaza singing China’s national anthem with its lyric “Rise up, those who refuse…
Death of baby in China incites anger on social media over ‘zero Covid’ rules
The death of a four-month-old baby in central China has stoked public anger on social media as frustrations mount over Beijing’s stringent “dynamic zero Covid” policy, which has confined millions to their homes and sparked angry protests. The girl died after suffering vomiting and diarrhoea while in quarantine at a hotel in the city of Zhengzhou, according to a post by her father, Li Baoliang, on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo on Wednesday. Li had called an emergency hotline for help after his daughter vomited repeatedly in the early hours of…
China braces for wave of workers fleeing iPhone factory in Covid-hit Zhengzhou
Cities in central China have hastily drawn up plans to isolate migrant workers fleeing to their home towns from the country’s largest iPhone factory, amid fears they will spread coronavirus after leaving the plant in Covid-hit Zhengzhou. Videos shared on Chinese social media showed people who are allegedly workers at the Foxconn plant climbing over fences and carrying their belongings along a road. It was previously reported that a number of workers had been placed under quarantine because of an outbreak of the disease. Foxconn, a supplier to Apple that…
Reports of teenager dying in Covid quarantine cause outcry in China
Reports that a 16-year-old girl has died in a Covid quarantine centre after pleas from her family for medical help were ignored have caused anger in China, where ongoing tight pandemic controls have started to take their toll on a weary population. Videos of the girl have spread across Chinese social media in the last 24 hours. The distressing footage, which the Guardian has not been able to independently verify, shows the teenager ill, struggling to breathe and convulsing in a bunk bed at what is purported to be a…
Monkeypox: don’t touch foreigners, says China health chief, as first case reported
A senior Chinese health official has advised people to avoid physical contact with foreigners to prevent possible monkeypox infection after the first known case of the virus on mainland China was reported on Friday. “To prevent possible monkeypox infection and as part of our healthy lifestyle, it is recommended that 1) you do not have direct skin-to-skin contact with foreigners,” Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted on his official Weibo page on Saturday. Wu also called for people to avoid “skin-to-skin contact”…
Xinjiang lockdown: Chinese censors drown out posts about food and medicine shortages
Chinese censors have reportedly been ordered to flood social media with innocuous posts about Xinjiang to drown out mounting complaints of food and medication shortages in a region under lockdown for more than a month. The Ili Kazakh autonomous prefecture, also known as Yili, is home to about 4.5 million people, and is believed to have been first put into lockdown in early August, without official public announcement, after an outbreak of Covid-19. In recent days social media has hosted reams of post about food shortages, delays or refusals of…
Chinese city’s residents made to queue for Covid tests in heat above 40C
Residents of the south-western Chinese city of Chongqing have been queueing on the streets to be tested for Covid, despite extreme temperatures that have soared past 40C (104F) this week. Photos posted on Chinese social media also showed health workers testing residents while wearing full hazmat suits in the heatwave. Other images showed that the tests were being carried out while bushfires raged in the background, prompting descriptions of the situation as “apocalyptic”. The city of more than 31 million people reported eight new confirmed Covid cases on Friday. Authorities…
China imposes Covid lockdown in Xi’an after handful of cases
Businesses, schools and restaurants in Xi’an will close for one week, officials have said, after the Chinese city logged a handful of Covid-19 cases as outbreaks nationwide strain Beijing’s zero-tolerance virus approach. China is the last major economy wedded to a zero-Covid strategy, deploying snap lockdowns, quarantines and travel curbs in a bid to weed out new infections. Xi’an, a historic city of 13 million that endured a month-long lockdown at the end of last year, has reported 18 cases since Saturday in a cluster driven by the fast-spreading Omicron…
Alarm in Beijing after announcement zero-Covid policy may last five years
Authorities in Beijing have sparked confusion and alarm after announcing the strict zero-Covid policy could be in place for the next five years, including mass mandatory testing and travel restrictions. The notice, published on Monday afternoon, was attributed to Cai Qi, the Beijing secretary of the Chinese Communist party. The original text said: “In the next five years, Beijing will unremittingly grasp the normalisation of epidemic prevention and control.” The notice was first posted by Beijing Daily and republished by other state media outlets. It spread widely across social media,…