BEIJING (AP) — China has suspended or closed more than 1,000 social media accounts criticizing government policies regarding the COVID-19 outbreak.
The popular Sina Weibo social media platform says it has addressed 12,854 violations, including attacks on experts, academics and medical workers, and temporarily or permanently banned 1,120 accounts. Did.
The ruling Communist Party, which relied heavily on the medical community to justify strict lockdowns, quarantine measures and mass testing, abruptly abandoned almost all of it last month, leading to a surge in new cases. rice field. Expanded medical resources to the limitThe party does not allow direct criticism and imposes severe restrictions on freedom of speech.
Sina Weibo said in a statement on Thursday that the company “will continue to investigate and clean up all kinds of illegal content and create a harmonious and friendly community environment for the majority of users.” .
Criticism has mostly focused on the draconian enforcement of regulations, including unrestricted travel restrictions that have left people confined to their homes for weeks, sometimes without adequate food or medical care. Also, anyone who may have tested positive or who may have been in contact with such a person is confined to a field hospital where overcrowding, poor diet and hygiene are commonly noted. It also diverged to the requirement that it be observed by
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The social and economic costs ultimately sparked rare street protests in Beijing and other cities, and may have influenced the party’s decision to quickly ease the toughest measures.
As part of the latest changes, China will also no longer pursue criminal charges against people accused of violating border quarantine rules, according to a notice issued by five government departments on Saturday.
Individuals currently in custody will be released and seized assets will be returned, the notice said.
China Daily’s official website said in a report on the notification that the adjustments were “made with the aim of adapting to the new situation of epidemic prevention and control after comprehensively considering the harm of behavior to society.” Stated.
China is currently facing a surge in cases and hospitalizations in major cities as it prepares for further expansion into less developed regions with the start of the Lunar New Year travel rush starting in the next few days. International flights are still down, but officials expect domestic rail and air travel to double around the same time last year, approaching the number of holiday periods in 2019 before the pandemic hit.
People carry luggage outside the Beijing Railway Station as the annual Lunar New Year travel rush begins amid the COVID-19 epidemic ahead of the Chinese New Year in Beijing, China, on January 7, 2023. Photo credit: Tingshu Wang/REUTERS
The Ministry of Transport on Friday called on travelers to reduce travel and gatherings, especially those involving the elderly, pregnant women, small children and those with underlying medical conditions.
People using public transport are also asked to wear masks and pay special attention to health and personal hygiene, Vice Minister Suh Chengguang said at a press conference.
Nonetheless, China is moving forward with plans to end mandatory quarantines for people arriving from abroad starting Sunday.
The city of Beijing will also lift the requirement that students in the city’s schools must test negative for COVID-19 to enter campus when classes resume after the holidays on February 13. . Schools will be allowed to move classes online in the event of a new outbreak, but must return to in-person instruction as soon as possible, the city’s education department 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 severe cases, and the potential emergence of new variants, have prompted governments to look elsewhere. Establish virus testing requirements For travelers from China.
The World Health Organization has also expressed concern about the lack of data from China, but the United States requires travelers from China to have negative test results within 48 hours of departure.
Chinese health authorities publish daily numbers of new infections, severe cases and deaths, but these figures only include officially confirmed cases. A very narrow definition of COVID-related death.
Officials said they were no longer able to provide a complete picture of the state of the latest outbreak as the government ended compulsory testing and allowed people with mild symptoms to self-test and recover at home. I’m here.
On Saturday, the National Health Commission reported 10,681 new domestic cases, bringing the country’s total number of confirmed cases to 482,057. He also had three new deaths reported in the last 24 hours, bringing his total to 5,267.
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The number is part of the number released by the United States, which has recorded more than one million deaths out of nearly 101 million cases.
However, it is also much lower than the estimates published by some local governments. The east coast province of Zhejiang said on Tuesday it was seeing about 1 million new cases a day.
China says the testing requirements imposed by foreign governments (most recently Germany and Sweden) are not based on science. Threatening unspecified countermeasures. Its spokesperson said the situation was under control and rejected accusations of a lack of preparations for reopening.
Despite such allegations, the Health Board on Saturday rolled out regulations to increase surveillance for virus mutations, including testing the city’s wastewater. Lengthy regulations called for increased data collection from hospitals and local government health departments, and increased checks for “pneumonia of unknown origin.”
When variants emerge in outbreaks, they are discovered by viral gene sequencing.
Since the pandemic began, China has shared 4,144 sequences with GISAID, a global platform for coronavirus data. That’s just 0.04% of the number of reported cases, more than one-hundredth that of the United States and nearly one-fourth that of neighboring Mongolia.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong also plans to reopen some of its border crossings with mainland China on Sunday, allowing tens of thousands of people to cross each day without being quarantined.
The semi-autonomous southern Chinese city has been hit hard by the virus, with land and sea border crossings with the mainland closed for almost three years. Despite the risks, the reopening is expected to provide a much-needed boost to Hong Kong’s tourism and retail businesses.
