China’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid is starting to wear thin in the eastern city of Yangzhou, much of which has been in a lockdown since the beginning of the month.
Over the weekend, one man got into a brawl with a group of volunteers at a roadblock. After video of the altercation was widely shared online, some residents complained that they could not go out to buy their own food and had to rely on volunteers to deliver produce that some people claimed was rotten.
Beijing initially scrambled to stamp out an outbreak that began on July 21 and quickly spread to half of China’s provinces and autonomous regions, exposing some limitations of its approach to pandemic control.
The outbreak, which spread fast and often through asymptomatic cases, posed the biggest challenge yet for Chinese officials since the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan early last year. At one point some domestic health experts even called for a different Covid approach.
Despite the criticism, China’s National Health Commission on Monday reported zero new cases for the first time since this latest outbreak began.
But the approach has elicited frustration and anger from those who have had to scrap plans as officials turned to the same playbook they used last year — limiting travel, testing and tracing infections, and confining people to their homes. Millions of residents in Zhengzhou were forced to stand in line for virus testing. In Nanjing, where Delta cases first emerged, residents were required to submit to four successive tests.
In Yangzhou, a partial lockdown restricted the movement of millions of residents. Later, officials doubled down, preventing families from leaving their homes.
“After our joint efforts in the previous stage, it is now the time when we most need to grit our teeth to try hardest and fight all in one go,” Xu Lincan, a senior Yangzhou official, was quoted in state media as saying last week.
It was this tough approach that appeared to cause one man to lash out over the weekend after he was stopped at a roadblock near his compound. After volunteers checked his identification and documentation, the man hit one of them on the head, according to a police report.
In the video of the brawl posted online, a group of volunteers in red vests appeared to gang up on the man. One volunteer kicked the man in the head, face and chest. He was later fined and put in detention for 10 days. The other volunteers were also fined, the police said.
In other developments around the world:
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New Zealand has extended its national lockdown until the end of Friday, with an additional four days’ lockdown for the city of Auckland. The country on Monday announced 35 new cases in the community, bringing the total reported in the current outbreak to 107, mostly in Auckland. All are believed to be the more contagious Delta variant.
Natasha Frost contributed reporting.
Source : Nytimes
