New Year’s Eve sparks hope in China even as censors target online COVID content from Health & Fitness Journal

©Health & Fitness Journal. Elderly patients receive IV treatment at a clinic in a village in Lezhi county after strict measures to contain the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) were lifted nationwide in Ziyang, China’s Sichuan province, 29 December 2022. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang

By Martin Quin Pollard and Eduardo Baptista

WUHAN/BEJING (Health & Fitness Journal) – New Year’s Eve in China sparked a wave of online reflection, some critical, of China’s strict zero-COVID policy

the country has complied with for nearly three years, and the impact of its abrupt reversal this month.

The sudden shift to living with the virus has sparked a wave of infections across the country, a further drop in economic activity and international concern, with Britain and France the latest to impose restrictions on travelers from China.

Three years after the pandemic began, China has acted this month to join a world that has largely reopened after unprecedented protests that became a de facto referendum against the zero-COVID policy championed by President Xi Jinping, to live with COVID.

The protests were the strongest display of public defiance in Xi’s ten-year presidency and coincided with dismal growth figures for China’s $17 trillion economy.

On Saturday, people in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, expressed hope that the New Year would bring better luck.

Several people in Wuhan lamented how far the virus had spread after all pandemic curbs were lifted, with one, 45-year-old Chen Mei, saying she only hopes her teenage daughter will resume normal classes in the long term in 2023 could.

“If she can’t go to school and only have classes online, it’s definitely not an effective way of learning,” she said.

“Kids don’t have such good self-discipline. And then we adults are sometimes locked at home because of the disease control. It’s definitely having an impact.”

Thousands of users on China’s Twitter-like Weibo (NASDAQ:) criticized local outlet Netease News’s removal of a viral video that summarized real-life stories from 2022 that had captivated the Chinese public.

Many of the stories contained in the video, which could not be seen or shared on domestic social media platforms as of Saturday, highlighted the difficulties ordinary Chinese are facing as a result of the strict COVID policy.

Weibo and Netease did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Weibo hashtag over the video garnered nearly 4 million hits before it disappeared from platforms around noon on Saturday. Social media users created new hashtags to get the comments.

“What a perverted world, all you can do is sing about fake, but you can’t show real life,” one user wrote, attaching a screenshot of a blank page returned when searching the hashtags.

The disappearance of the videos and hashtags, seen by many as an act of censorship, suggests the Chinese government still views the narrative of its handling of the disease as a politically sensitive issue.

OVERLOADED HOSPITAL, FUNERAL HOMES

The wave of new infections has swept hospitals and funeral homes across the country, and hearses outside crematoria are stoking public concern.

China, a country of 1.4 billion people, reported one new COVID death for Friday, just like the day before – numbers that don’t match the experience of other countries after they reopened.

UK-based health data company Airfinity said Thursday around 9,000 people are likely to die from COVID in China every day. Cumulative deaths in China since December 1 are likely to have reached 100,000, with total infections reaching 18.6 million, it said.

At the Wuhan Central Hospital, where former COVID whistleblower Li Wenliang worked and later died of the virus in early 2020, patient numbers on Saturday were down compared to the onslaught of recent weeks, a hazmat-wearing worker outside the hospital reported a fever, the clinic told Health & Fitness Journal .

“This wave is almost over,” said the worker.

A pharmacist, whose shop is next to the hospital, said most people in the city have now been infected and have recovered.

“It’s mainly old people who get it now,” he said. “They have underlying medical conditions and can get breathing problems, lung infections or heart problems.”

NEW YEAR, NEW CHALLENGES

As the first indication of the strain on China’s huge manufacturing sector from the change in COVID policy, Saturday’s data showed that factory activity contracted in December for the third straight month and at the fastest pace in almost three years.

In addition to the mounting economic strain, rising infections following the lifting of restrictions have also sparked international concern, particularly over the possibility of a new, stronger variant emerging from China.

The UK and France were the latest countries to require travelers from China to present negative COVID-19 tests. The United States, South Korea, India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan have all imposed similar measures.

The World Health Organization on Friday again urged China’s health authorities to regularly share specific and real-time information on the country’s COVID situation while continuing to assess the recent surge in infections.

China’s strict criteria for identifying deaths from COVID-19 will underestimate the true toll of the pandemic and could make it harder to communicate the best ways for people to protect themselves, health experts have warned.