Friday, March 29

Despair as China’s Blockaded Cities Pay the Price for Zero Covid Strategy | Coronavirus


Tight closures in the Chinese cities of Xi’an and Yuzhou are taking a toll on the population and health systems, according to residents, with complaints of food shortages and dangerous delays in access to healthcare.

Xi’an, a city of 13 million people, has been under a strict lockdown for nearly two weeks, while Yuzhou’s 1.2 million residents were ordered to stay indoors since Monday night, after three asymptomatic cases were discovered. Public transportation, the use of private motor vehicles and the operation of all shops and stores that do not meet daily needs have been suspended.

On China’s strictly supervised and regulated social media platforms, a significant number of residents have posted their concerns and anxieties, despite broad general support for the authorities’ swift response to the outbreaks.

Local media have reported delays at major city hospitals, requiring negative tests from patients before they can be admitted. A screenshot of a post that went viral before being removed claimed that a man and his sick father were turned away from a Xi’an hospital because they were from an area designated as higher risk. The post said the man’s father was having a heart attack but died when he was admitted for treatment.

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In another account posted on social media, a woman in labor lost her baby after she was prevented from entering a Xi’an hospital. In a post since deleted, a family member described calling emergency services on the night of January 1 for her aunt after she began to be in pain, but the phone rang.

Instead, she was sent to the hospital around 8 pm but “the security at the front door would not let us in, because the result of the nucleic acid test had been more than four hours ago,” they said.

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“While I was waiting outside, I saw the video her husband sent me, she was holding the chair, struggling to sit up, and her blood was running down the chair and her pants.” They said hospital staff saw her and took her inside and into the operating room, but the girl died.

A spokeswoman for the state-linked Shaanxi Women’s Federation said they had spoken to authorities about the incident. “They should be learning about the incident now. Because the epidemic in Xi’an is quite serious now, there should definitely be a solution. “

A community volunteer uses a megaphone to remind residents to maintain their social distance as they queue to collect their daily necessities outside a residential block in Xi'an.
A community volunteer uses a megaphone to remind residents to maintain their social distance as they queue to collect their daily necessities outside a residential block in Xi’an. Photograph: AP

Reports of food shortages in Xi’an have also flourished on social media despite promises by authorities to deliver supplies to homes and claims from neighbors exchanging cigarettes and personal belongings for food.

“I have only received free vegetables once so far, and one package per household,” said one resident. “The price of food in the city is very high and there is no one to regulate it. There is no takeout service for daily needs, and the errand fee is about 100 yuan ($ 15) before someone takes the order. “

The strict rules have also prevented people from going in and out. Sixth tone reported Authorities arrested several people who were trying to evade blockades and return to villages without self-quarantine, including a man who cycled 100 kilometers (60 miles) through mountains and another who swam through a frozen river.

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Authorities have admitted that there have been problems, including poorly prepared centralized quarantine facilities to which tens of thousands of people have been sent.

Local officials are often punished or fired for alleged failures in preventing outbreaks, including two senior Communist Party officials in Xi’an who were removed from their posts for their “insufficient rigor to prevent and control the outbreak.”

On Monday, Xi’an officials said the city had spent about $ 1 million helping people in need and had housed about 200 stranded people in temporary shelters. They also promised to establish hotlines and more support services.

Xi’an is the center of the current outbreak, the worst in China since the early months of the pandemic. More than 1,700 cases have been recorded in the city since the beginning of December, a relatively low number compared to global figures, as China continues to implement the zero Covid strategy, which has kept infections low for much of the years. last 18 months.

With the Olympics just around the corner and a central government pledge promising to eradicate the virus, local officials have enacted increasingly stringent responses, resulting in closures reminiscent of those in Wuhan in early 2020. Other urban centers where clusters have been detected now also face restrictions including a new partial blockade in the city of Zhengzhou for the discovery of four cases.

On Tuesday, China reported 41 new symptomatic community cases, including 35 in Xi’an. On Wednesday, authorities said the outbreak in the city had been largely “controlled” after the shutdown.

Ma Guanghui, deputy director of the Shaanxi health commission, told a news conference that the outbreak was “showing a downward trend.”

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Additional reports from Xiaoqian Zhu and agencies


www.theguardian.com

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