Despite having recently announced less strict measures for Chinese and foreigners arriving from abroad, China maintains its Covid-zero policy and imposed this Monday (21) a lockdown on a district of about 3.7 million inhabitants.
The city of Guangzhou recorded 8,181 cases of Covid-19 on Sunday (20) and is facing its worst outbreak of the disease in three years, with more than 80,000 infections since the last week of October.
The southern city is one of the largest in China, with nearly 19 million inhabitants, and has imposed a five-day lockdown in the Baiyun district, the most populous in Guangzhou. During this period, schools will be closed, public transport services are suspended and residents have been advised to stay at home. One of the busiest airports in China is located in Baiyun.
Covid-zero, which determines the closure of entire neighborhoods and cities when cases of the disease are identified, is collaborating for the Chinese economy to have its second worst performance this year since 1976.
In early November, two cases of deaths of people in regions under lockdown sparked outrage on Chinese social media. A 55-year-old woman suffering from an anxiety disorder threw herself from the 12th floor of her apartment building in Inner Mongolia.
Another tragedy occurred in the city of Lanzhou, in northern China, where a three-year-old boy suffered poisoning from a gas leak in another residential complex closed by Covid-zero.
The father called the emergency services four times. When he was finally seen, the staff member told him he could only get medical advice online because he lived in a high-risk area for Covid-19.
The father sought out health officials in the region, but was criticized for not wearing a mask. When the boy was finally taken to a hospital, about two hours after the phone calls, the child died shortly after being admitted to the unit.
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