China bolts people inside their homes to keep Covid at bay

‘We are also looking into the possibility of installing alarms to replace current methods’

CHINESE officials are bolting residents shut inside their homes to prevent them spreading Covid. Public health workers used wires to barricade doors and installed iron bolts in order to lock people in, according to videos circulating on Chinese social media.

The videos were the latest sign of an increasingly draconian set of lockdowns that have triggered rare public dissent in China. The country is one of the few places in the world that still follows a strict “zero Covid” policy.

The measures are applied to those who refuse to hand over their apartment keys so they can be locked in from the outside, according to the independent publication Caixin Global.

The videos sparked outrage online, where it was pointed out that the measures risked endangering people’s lives as they would have been 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. Another person compared the situation to being locked inside a concentration camp.

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 banned farmers from working in the fields to curb the spread, but videos emerged later showing people sneaking out in the middle of the night to plough.

On Tuesday, Beijing ramped up Covid-related restrictions by banning certain residents, including those from neighbourhoods labelled “medium” and “high risk” for Covid transmission, from leaving the city.

The city has also shut down dozens of subway stations.