China reports 3rd daily record for Covid cases
China on Saturday reported a third consecutive daily record for new cases amid social media reports of citizen protests against Covid-related restrictions including a large scale demonstration in the northwestern city of Urumqi and sporadic ones in Beijing, indicating a seething resentment among people over lockdowns and unexplained curbs upending lives and shrinking incomes.
While the rest of the world has mostly moved on to an endemic existence with the Covid-19 virus, China continues to adhere to the recently eased but stringently implemented “zeroCovid” policy of isolating every single infection with isolation, lockdowns and mass tests.
Given the fast spreading, and country-wide, Omicron-driven outbreak, the worst since the pandemic began, the policy has disrupted normal lives and depressed the economy.
China on Saturday reported 35,183 new Covid-19 infections for Friday including a handful of “imported” cases, the national health commission (NHC) said in its daily bulletin, of which 3,474 were symptomatic while the remaining were asymptomatic.
The big cities of Guangzhou, Chongqing and Beijing continued to struggle to contain raging outbreaks with Beijing recording another single day
high of nearly 2,600 new infections.
Beijing, a city of nearly 22 million people, has literally grinded to a halt in the past week with Covid-19-related restrictions implemented in all of its 16 districts - this when a lockdown has not been formally announced.
Citizen protests
Many reports of protest by citizens against China’s “zeroCovid” rules were shared over social media especially on Twitter through the intervening night between Friday and Saturday, giving a rare glimpse of the simmering anger among many residents over its government’s Covid control policies.
Video footage and pictures
showed people protesting, in large and small groups as well as individuals, across China in cities like Urumqi, Beijing, financial capital, Shanghai, Zhengzhou in central China and Chongqing.
Many of Urumqi’s four million residents have been barred from leaving their locked down homes for over two-to-three months, in some cases for over 100 days, because of the “zeroCovid” policy despite infection numbers being low.
News and footage of community-level protests in Beijing showing irate residents demanding that compounds be reopened were shared on social media as well. In at least one case, the lockdown was revoked.