Since China shifted its notorious zero-covid in December 2022, Chinese hospital system has been out of order due to the increase in Covid-19 cases with over 5,000 deaths recorded by the officials. But the numbers are likely much higher as the Chinese government is known to withhold the true number of death toll of disaster.
According to Foxnews, Beijing hospital runs out of beds, families burn bodies in streets as deaths spike. Associated Press reports that old women bent over with oxygen masks in the hallways as they wait for triage from doctors.
But the Chinese government is still trying to damp down the severity of the new development of the disease. As COVID-19 cases continued to spread, China changed its criteria for key data reporting, mainly what qualifies as a COVID-related death — limited to deaths caused by respiratory failure and pneumonia — and ceased to report asymptomatic cases.
With the major travel restrictions being lifted, the world is facing another wave of new diseases originating from China, just like the initial outbreak of Covid-19 in early 2020. The lack of transparency and misleading data released by the Chinese government has made the rest of the world scramble to respond. Many countries has responded to China's rapid opening up with the potential of facing highly infected travellers. The US, the UK, Italy, India, Israel, Spain, Canada, South Korea, and France are all implementing some form of restrictions on air travel from China.
In addition, those protested against the zero-covid policy are still being jailed despite of the reversal. According to Human Rights Watch, many people were arrested when thousands of people in Shanghai publicly protesting the government’s strict Covid-19 measures and denouncing the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rule. Videos circulated online show dozens of police officers arriving at protest sites in Shanghai and elsewhere, trying to disperse the crowds, and dragging protesters into police vehicles. Shanghai police even handcuffed a BBC journalist covering the protest and took him to a police station, where they kicked and beat him.
I call on the world society to keep pressing the Chinese authorities to release all protesters wrongfully detained and cease online censorship of covid-related information. I also call on the outside world to support Chinese people's demonstrations for freedom and democratization.
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