BEIJING – China has suspended or closed the social media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s policies on the Covid-19 outbreak, as the country moves to restore tough anti-virus restrictions.
The popular Sina Weibo social media platform said it had dealt with 12,854 violations including attacks on experts, researchers and medical staff and issued temporary or permanent bans to 1,120 accounts.
The ruling Communist Party had relied largely on the medical community to justify its tough lockdowns, quarantine measures and mass testing, almost all of which were suddenly abandoned last month, leading to a surge in new cases that has stretched medical resources to their limits. The party does not allow direct criticism and sets strict limits on freedom of expression.
The company “will continue to increase the investigation and cleanup of all kinds of illegal content and create a harmonious and friendly community environment for the majority of users,” Sina Weibo said in a statement dated Thursday.
Criticism has largely focused on heavy-handed enforcement of regulations, including open-ended travel restrictions that saw people trapped in their homes for weeks, sometimes sealed inside without adequate food or medical care. Anger was also vented over the requirement that anyone who potentially tested positive or had been in contact with such a person be confined for observation in a field hospital, where overcrowding, poor food and hygiene were commonplace.
The social and economic costs eventually led to rare street protests in Beijing and other cities, possibly influencing the party’s decision to quickly ease the strictest measures.
As part of the latest changes, China will no longer prosecute people accused of violating border quarantine rules, according to a statement issued by five government ministries on Saturday.
Individuals currently in custody will be released and seized assets returned, the release said.
The adjustments “were made after considering the damage of the behavior to society and aim to adapt to the new situations of epidemic prevention and control,” the official China Daily newspaper said in a report on the announcement.
China is now facing a surge in cases and hospitalizations in major cities and is bracing for a further spread to less developed areas with the start of the Lunar New Year travel rush, which will begin in the coming days. While international flights are still down, authorities say they expect domestic train and air travel to double from the same period last year, bringing the total close to the numbers of the 2019 holiday season before the pandemic hit.
The Transport Ministry on Friday urged travelers to reduce travel and gatherings, especially if they involve elderly people, pregnant women, young children and those with underlying conditions.
People using public transport are also urged to wear masks and pay special attention to their health and personal hygiene, Vice Minister Xu Chengguang told reporters at a briefing.
Nonetheless, China is moving forward with a plan to end mandatory quarantines for people arriving from abroad starting Sunday.
Beijing also plans to drop the requirement for students in city schools to have a negative Covid-19 test to enter campus when classes resume on February 13 after the holiday break. While schools will be allowed to move classes online in the event of new outbreaks, they must return to in-person instruction as soon as possible, the city’s education agency said in a statement Friday.
However, the end of mass testing, a very limited amount of basic data such as the number of deaths, infections and serious cases, and the potential emergence of new variants have prompted governments elsewhere to introduce virus testing requirements for travelers from China.
The World Health Organization has also expressed concern about the lack of data from China, while the United States requires a negative test result for travelers from China within 48 hours of departure.
Chinese health authorities publish a daily count of new cases, serious cases and deaths, but these figures include only officially confirmed cases and use a very narrow definition of Covid-related deaths.
Authorities say that since the government ended mandatory testing and allowed people with mild symptoms to self-test and recover at home, it can no longer provide a full picture of the state of the latest outbreak.
On Saturday, the National Health Commission reported 10,681 new domestic cases, bringing the country’s total number of confirmed cases to 482,057. Three new deaths were also reported in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 5,267.
The numbers are a fraction of those announced by the United States, which has put its death toll at more than 1 million out of about 101 million cases.
But they are also far less than the estimates released by some local authorities. Zhejiang, an east coast province, said on Tuesday it was seeing about 1 million new cases a day.
China has said the testing requirements imposed by foreign governments – most recently Germany and Sweden – are not based on science and has threatened unspecified countermeasures. Its spokespeople have said the situation is under control and reject allegations of a lack of preparations for reopening.
Despite such claims, the Health Commission on Saturday rolled out regulations for enhanced surveillance of viral mutations, including testing of city wastewater. The lengthy rules called for increased data collection by hospitals and local health departments and stepped up checks for “pneumonia of unknown cause.”
If a variant occurs in an outbreak, it is found by genetic sequencing of the virus.
Since the start of the pandemic, China has shared 4,144 sequences with GISAID, a global platform for coronavirus data. That’s just 0.04% of the reported number of cases โ a rate more than 100 times less than in the United States and nearly four times less than in neighboring Mongolia.
Source: sn.dk