China reiterated over the weekend that it will maintain its Covid-zero strategy, which stipulates strict lockdowns in neighborhoods and even entire cities when only a few cases of the disease are registered, even in the face of the repercussion of two deaths in the country. last week.
“Practice has proved that our pandemic prevention and control policy and a series of strategic measures are completely correct, and are the most cost-effective and effective,” said Hu Xiang, senior Chinese health officials at a press conference on Saturday (5).
“We must adhere to the principle of putting people and lives first, and the broader strategy of preventing of cases of external and internal outbreaks.”
In October, during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPCh) that paved the way for a unprecedented third term, dictator Xi Jinping had already warned that the Covid-zero policy would remain, even if it was helping the Chinese economy this year to have the second worst performance since 1976.
Last week, two cases of deaths of people in regions under lockdown generated outrage on the networks Chinese social. A 55 year old woman who suffered from anxiety disorder threw herself from the 12 th floor of the apartment where she lived in Inner Mongolia.
According to CNN, the entrance to the condominium where she lived was closed off with fences at the end of October, after two cases of Covid-19 were reported. A video, with images of the 29-year-old daughter who lived with the woman asking for help and begging health authorities to allow her to leave to run to the spot where her mother had fallen, had millions of views on Weibo, the so-called Chinese Twitter.
Another tragedy occurred in the city of Lanzhou, in northern China, where a three-year-old boy was poisoned by a gas leak in another residential complex closed by Covid -zero.
According to reports, the father called the emergency services four times. When he was finally seen, the employee said that he could only receive medical advice online because he lived in a high-risk area for Covid-19.
The father sought 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.
