China reported its highest number of new COVID-19 cases in six months on Monday, despite multiple lockdowns disrupting the economy and daily life.
This weekend, health authorities dashed hopes of a relaxation of the zero COVID policy, stressing that it will continue to be applied “unwaveringly”.
This strategy consists of confining neighborhoods or entire cities as soon as cases appear, carrying out massive screenings or even quarantining people who test positive and travelers arriving from abroad.
But these restrictions are sometimes accompanied by poor access to food or medical care and difficulty in traveling within China and abroad, frustrating a growing number of Chinese.
The Ministry of Health announced nearly 5,500 new local positive cases on Monday, many of them in the coastal province of Guangdong (south), a major manufacturing center.
In Beijing, nearly 60 new cases were reported on Monday, leading to the closure of schools in the densely populated district of Chaoyang, the seat of the business district and many embassies.
The French high school, which welcomes several hundred students from kindergarten to terminale, has also been ordered to close.
“The Chaoyang Education Commission has decided to switch to distance learning courses” from Tuesday to Friday, the establishment said in an email sent to parents.
Companies, relaying the injunctions of the district, have also asked their employees to switch to teleworking and to carry out a daily PCR test for three days.
Suicide
However, the municipal authorities declared on Monday during a press briefing that the recent “successive epidemic outbreaks” had been “effectively controlled overall”.
In Zhengzhou (central China), the largest iPhone factory in the world is still confined.
The site “is currently operating with a significantly reduced capacity” and this disruption will lead to delivery delays, the American group Apple conceded on Sunday.
Separately, the suicide by defenestration of a 55-year-old woman in the confined city of Hohhot, in northern Inner Mongolia, caused an uproar this weekend because, by the authorities’ own admission, COVID restrictions have hampered the intervention of the emergency services.
As is sometimes the case in China in certain districts, the access doors to the residential building had been sealed to prevent any exit.
The two daughters of the unfortunate, one of whom lived in the same apartment, had warned the authorities that their mother had suicidal thoughts, asking in vain for her evacuation.
“Who has the right to weld the doors of the buildings? “, wondered, furious, a user on the social network Weibo. “In the event of an earthquake or a fire, who will be responsible? »
Local authorities have publicly criticized poor management by neighborhood officials.
Dramas related to anti-COVID restrictions occur regularly.
A few days ago, a three-year-old child died of carbon monoxide poisoning in Lanzhou, the confined capital of Gansu province (northwest).
In a message published on the Internet, but now deleted, his father accused the agents in charge of the application of the containment of having hindered his access to the hospital. The district authorities then apologized.