Chinese censors on Friday cleaned up reports that a teenager had died in a quarantine facility after the case sparked anger and prompted citizens to question the country’s zero-Covid policy.
China is the latest major country to commit to a zero-tolerance Covid strategy, responding to dozens of outbreaks with lockdowns and sending entire neighborhoods into makeshift quarantine facilities.
But the public has fought back against virus restrictions, sometimes responding to new lockdowns with protests, amid scuffles between citizens and officials.
Posts circulated on Chinese social media this week saying a 14-year-old girl had died in downtown Ruzhou after falling ill in a quarantine facility and being denied immediate medical care.
The reports sparked renewed anger at a sensitive time for the country’s rulers.
China’s political elite holds a key Communist Party meeting in Beijing this week that is expected to secure a historic third term for President Xi Jinping, with the country’s propaganda and security apparatus on high alert to any source of instability.
Unverified videos on the Chinese version of TikTok appeared to show a person lying in a bunk bed suffering seizures while others in the room cried out for help.
“In the beginning the child was fine … then she went[in quarantine]for four days and had a high fever and now she’s gone,” a woman – who is described in other videos as the child’s aunt – tells viewers, crying.
The woman says the girl “was experiencing convulsions, vomiting and a high fever and was not receiving timely medical attention,” and complained that local health officials were not responding to calls while the child was in critical condition.
AFP could not independently verify the videos, and calls to Ruzhou city’s propaganda, health and Covid prevention departments on Friday went unanswered.
– Hashtags disabled –
Chinese media, which had given fleeting attention to similar lockdown-related scandals in the past, were noticeably silent on the Ruzhou case this week.
By Friday afternoon, censors had removed almost all traces of the incident from the Chinese internet, disabled the Weibo hashtags for “Ruzhou Girl” and “Girl from Ruzhou dies in quarantine,” and removed most videos mentioning the girl’s alleged death .
The hashtag page for “Ruzhou Girl” had racked up 255,000 views and 158 posts as of Friday morning, according to official stats at the top of the page, though only four posts were visible before the site was fully banned later in the day.
“Are the lessons of Shanghai so completely forgotten?” One of the last remaining posts on the site asked and referred to the megacity’s spring lockdown, which left people without adequate food and supplies.
The poster wanted to know why “there wasn’t even a doctor to take care of a girl who needed to see you”.
The incident comes a month after 27 people died in a traffic accident while being taken to a quarantine facility in rural Guizhou province before dawn.
And in the run-up to Congress, censorship removed virtually all references to reports of a rare protest in Beijing involving banners denouncing President Xi and Covid policies.
