Nelson Mail

Locals locked in to stop Covid

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China’s fight against Covid-19 has reached new extremes, with officials in the northern province of Hebei sealing residents’ doors with wires and bolts to prevent them going outside.

Workers have used wires to barricade doors, and have installed iron bolts on the floors, to stop residents leaving their homes, according to videos circulatin­g on Chinese social media.

The measures apply to those who have refused to voluntaril­y hand over their apartment keys so they could be locked in from the outside, according to independen­t publicatio­n Caixin Global.

The videos have sparked outrage online, with Chinese social media users saying the measures risk endangerin­g people’s lives, as they would be unable to leave their homes in an emergency.

‘‘I’m so angry. They really don’t treat people like humans,’’ wrote one commenter on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

Faced with the backlash, authoritie­s in Qianan county blamed individual residentia­l communitie­s for their ‘‘simplistic and radical means’’ of keeping Covid in check.

‘‘We are investigat­ing and will modify the policy,’’ the Qianan Pandemic Prevention and Control Office wrote on the Chinese app WeChat. ‘‘We are also looking into the possibilit­y of installing alarms to replace current methods.’’

In the same county, authoritie­s have banned farmers from doing fieldwork in order to curb the spread of the virus. Videos have emerged showing people sneaking out in the middle of the night to plough their fields.

Millions of other people remain under various forms of lockdown across China, where the rapid spread of the Omicron variant is challengin­g the country’s draconian zero-Covid policy.

Beijing has ramped up Covidrelat­ed restrictio­ns by banning certain residents, including those from neighbourh­oods labelled ‘‘medium’’ and ‘‘high risk’’ for Covid transmissi­on, from leaving the city. Residents would be held ‘‘legally responsibl­e’’ if they left and spread Covid, said Tian Wei, director of the external informatio­n division of the capital’s publicity department. The city has also shut down dozens of subway stations.

While Shanghai remains China’s Covid epicentre, other cities are also gradually imposing new restrictio­ns.

In Zhengzhou, a city of 10 million in the central Henan province, the government has announced citywide testing and a partial lockdown after several cases were linked to the local high-speed railway station.

People responded by rushing to stock up on food and other essentials. Videos circulatin­g online showed jammed roads and crowded supermarke­ts. Many in China fear a repeat of the situation in Shanghai, where residents have complained of insufficie­nt food supplies during that city’s weeks-long lockdown.

– Telegraph Group

 ?? GETTY IMAGES ?? A Beijing metro worker closes a subway station due to concerns about the spread of Covid19. China is trying to contain a spike in coronaviru­s cases in the capital.
GETTY IMAGES A Beijing metro worker closes a subway station due to concerns about the spread of Covid19. China is trying to contain a spike in coronaviru­s cases in the capital.

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