China’s commercial capital Shanghai suffered a setback on Monday as authorities reported 58 new cases of Covid-19 outside areas under strict lockdown, while Beijing continued testing millions of people over the May 1 holiday.
Shanghai’s tough coronavirus restrictions have sparked rare public outrage, with millions of people trapped indoors for more than a month, some locked inside fenced-in residential complexes and many struggling with daily necessities.
While Shanghai officials said the situation was improving, images on social media unnerved the public at a time when the city’s hospitals and morgues are overwhelmed.
On Monday, authorities said they were investigating five employees after videos showed a local nursing home transferring an elderly person in a body bag to a morgue. Later, the person was found still alive.
Officials did not comment on the new cases at a press conference, but some people spoke out online.
“They announced that they had eliminated cases at the community level too soon,” commented one person on the Weibo platform.
The coronavirus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, and for two years, authorities managed to keep outbreaks under control with lockdowns and travel bans.
But the fast-spreading Omicron variant has been testing China’s “zero tolerance” Covid-2022 policy, something important for President Xi Jinping, who is expected to secure a third term this year.
Beijing, with dozens of daily infections in an outbreak in its second week, has not gone into lockdown, relying, at least for now, on mass testing to locate and isolate infections.
Source: CNN Brasil
