China has suspended or closed the social media accounts of greater than 1,000 critics of the federal government’s policies on the Covid-19 outbreak, because the country moves to further open up.
The favored Sina Weibo social media platform said it had addressed 12,854 violations including attacks on experts, scholars and medical employees and issued temporary or everlasting bans on 1,120 accounts.
The ruling Communist Party had largely relied on the medical community to justify its harsh lockdowns, quarantine measures and mass testing, just about all of which it abruptly abandoned last month, resulting in a surge in recent cases that have stretched medical resources to their limits. The party allows no direct criticism and imposes strict limits on free speech.
The corporate “will proceed to extend the investigation and cleanup of all types of illegal content, and create a harmonious and friendly community environment for the vast majority of users,” Sina Weibo said in a press release dated Thursday.
Criticism has largely focused on open-ended travel restrictions that saw people confined to their homes for weeks, sometimes without adequate food or medical care. Anger was also vented over the requirement that anyone who potentially tested positive or had been in touch with such an individual be confined for statement in a field hospital, where overcrowding, poor food and hygiene were commonly cited.
The social and economic costs eventually prompted rare street protests in Beijing and other cities, possibly influencing the party’s decision to swiftly ease the strictest measures.
China is now facing a surge in cases and hospitalizations in major cities and is bracing for an extra spread into less developed areas with the beginning of the Lunar Latest 12 months travel rush, set to get underway in coming days. While international flights are still reduced, authorities say they expect domestic rail and air journeys will double over the identical period last 12 months, bringing overall numbers near those of the 2019 holiday period before the pandemic hit.
The Transportation Ministry on Friday called on travelers to scale back trips and gatherings, particularly in the event that they involve elderly people, pregnant women, young children and people with underlying conditions.
People using public transport are also urged to wear masks and pay special attention to their health and private hygiene, Vice Minister Xu Chengguang told reporters at a briefing.
Nonetheless, China is forging ahead with a plan to finish mandatory quarantines for people arriving from abroad starting on Sunday.
Beijing also plans to drop a requirement for college students at city schools to have a negative Covid-19 test to enter campus when classes resume Feb. 13 after the vacation break. While schools shall be allowed to maneuver classes online within the event of recent outbreaks, they have to return to in-person instruction as soon as possible, town education bureau said in a press release Friday.
Nevertheless, the tip to mass testing, a highly limited amount of basic data equivalent to the variety of deaths, infections and severe cases, and the potential emergence of recent variants have prompted governments elsewhere to institute virus testing requirements for travelers from China.
The World Health Organization has also expressed concern in regards to the lack of knowledge from China, while the U.S. is requiring a negative test result for travelers from China inside 48 hours of departure.
Chinese health authorities publish a each day count of recent cases, severe cases and deaths, but those numbers include only officially confirmed cases and use a very narrow definition of Covid-related deaths.
Authorities say that because the government ended compulsory testing and permitted individuals with mild symptoms to check themselves and convalesce at home, it could now not provide a full picture of the state of the most recent outbreak.
On Sunday, the National Health Commission reported 10,681 recent domestic cases, bringing the country’s total variety of confirmed cases to 482,057. Three recent deaths were also reported over the previous 24 hours, bringing the full to five,267.
The numbers are a fraction of those announced by the U.S., which has put its death toll at greater than 1 million amongst some 101 million cases.
But they’re also much smaller than the estimates being released by some local governments. Zhejiang, a province on the east coast, said Tuesday it was seeing about 1 million recent cases a day.
China has said the testing requirements being imposed by foreign governments — most recently Germany and Sweden — aren’t science-based and has threatened unspecified countermeasures. Its spokespeople have said the situation is under control, and reject accusations of a scarcity of preparation for reopening.
If a variant emerges in an outbreak, it’s found through genetic sequencing of the virus.
Because the pandemic began, China has shared 4,144 sequences with GISAID, a worldwide platform for coronavirus data. That is only 0.04% of its reported variety of cases — a rate greater than 100 times lower than the USA and nearly 4 times lower than neighboring Mongolia.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong also plans to reopen a few of its border crossings with mainland China on Sunday and permit tens of hundreds of individuals to cross every single day without being quarantined.
The semi-autonomous southern Chinese city has been hard-hit by the virus and its land and sea border checkpoints with the mainland have been largely closed for nearly three years. Despite the danger, the reopening is predicted to offer a much-needed boost to Hong Kong’s tourism and retail sectors.