Sun 10 April 2022:
After a surge in cases in Shanghai caused the American consulate to let some workers leave the city, China blasted the US for making “groundless accusations” regarding its Covid-19 policy.
Since March, over 100,000 cases in Shanghai’s 25 million residents have been locked down in phases, causing food shortages and conflicts with health workers, putting Beijing’s zero-Covid approach under strain.
China’s largest city and financial centre has been under lockdown for 22 days, despite public health officials warnings that the Omicron Covid variant is so infectious that it cannot be wiped out by lockdowns.
Due to the spike in cases, the US embassy said Saturday it would permit non-essential employees to leave its consulate in Shanghai due to the case surge, warning citizens in China they may face “arbitrary enforcement” of virus curbs.
According to a statement posted on the foreign ministry’s website on Saturday, Beijing expressed “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the US side’s groundless accusations about China’s epidemic control policy”.
“This is the US’s own decision. However, it must be pointed out that China’s epidemic control policy is scientific and effective,” ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said, adding that Beijing had lodged “solemn representations” with American counterparts.
“We have full confidence that Shanghai and other places will overcome this round of the epidemic.”
China is sticking fast to a policy of snap lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions to staunch the spread of the virus even as Shanghai’s daily case numbers have spiralled under an Omicron-fuelled wave.
The business hub reported a record 24,943 new infections on Sunday — mostly asymptomatic, accounting for over 90 percent of the national total.
Authorities have prepared tens of thousands of extra beds in more than 100 makeshift hospitals as part of a strategy of isolating everybody who tests positive for the virus, regardless of symptoms.
Locals have began to resent the lockdown, with many going to social media to express their displeasure with food shortages and draconian rules, such as the recent killing of a pet corgi by a health worker.
People aren’t allowed to leave their homes to buy food, people are beginning to starve, The government can’t give us enough foods. People began to protest: give us food! Give us food!#Shanghai pic.twitter.com/5PFKhNs3XE
— 乔 (@Qiao101011) April 9, 2022
Some small district in said #Shanghai, a scalable riot broke out. Many screamed “I am starving to death, I am starving to death…!” pic.twitter.com/GyB6gsOiBw
— Northrop Gundam 💙🇺🇦💛 (@GundamNorthrop) April 7, 2022
The 26 million people under lockdown in Shanghai have continued to complain about food shortages due to a lack of couriers to carry out deliveries and uncertainty about when lockdown curbs may end.
And desperate residents looted emergency food supply points last night according to videos shared on, and swiftly deleted from, Chinese state-censored site Weibo.
The videos also showed crowds of Shanghai residents storming stores for undelivered food parcels.
An unpopular policy of separating infected children from their virus-free parents — now softened — also triggered a rare show of public anger this week.
Officials, on the other hand, are sticking to their zero-tolerance policy.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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