Covid-19: Ahead of Winter Olympics in Feb, China harsh on Covid control
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Amid several countries boycotting Winter Olympics, scheduled in Beijing from February 4 to 20, China has adopted extremely harsh measures to enforce a Covid-Zero policy and contain fresh outbreaks of the pandemics if only to save the Games from near collapse.
Currently, nearly 20 million people in three major cities are already under complete lockdown—the residents are not allowed even to peep out of windows. Police and health officials routinely raid homes, round up people, including children, at midnight for forced Covid-19 tests, and push the suspected victims into total isolation in cubicle-like plastic cages from where they can escape only after complete cure.
So paranoid is China about the pandemic that officials fumigate entire cities if only a solitary case of infection is detected, the media reported.
More. It is severely punishing officials and citizens alike for any alleged lapse in Covid-appropriate behavior.
In one of the harshest punishments for alleged lapses in enforcing the government’s strict Covid-Zero policy, China recently imprisoned three people for up to four-plus years over breaches of rules that led to a virus outbreak.
According to state-controlled Global Times, the alleged violations at a cargo company in the northeastern port city of Dalian included failing to ensure employees wore masks, prohibiting their visit to public places after office hours, and getting them properly quarantined and tested. These lapses led to four people infecting 83 others, the media said on Tuesday.
Last week, a court levied a fine of 800,000 yuan (USD 125,000) on a cargo shipping company, which brought frozen food into Dalian in November 2020. It awarded three of its officials prison terms ranging from 39 to 57 months last week.
In particular, China is finicky about Beijing’s protection, often requiring Covid-negative tests for those entering the national capital by plane or train, and strictly tracking people’s movements around town with a mobile app.
While the world blames China for the pandemic, Beijing claims the virus came with imported meat and seafood and that the scourge could persist in conditions found in cold-chain food and packaging. Chinese officials have since been testing imported meat and seafood for traces of the virus.
In this context, Dalian, which handles about 70 percent of the total imported cold-chain products in China, came under the spotlight. In November 2021, they linked the port city to an outbreak, placing tens of thousands of university students under lockdown on the cold-chain industry.
On Wednesday, police in Xuchang, Henan province, said it detained the regional head of a diagnostics unit for breaking virus rules which caused an outbreak.
Henan is one of China’s latest coronavirus hotspots, prompting Vice Premier Sun Chunlan to direct authorities in the central province to adopt more targeted measures to curb Covid-19, according to Xinhua, the official news agency.
