More countries around the world are joining the U.S. in imposing new rules on travelers from China amid concern over a lack of transparency from Beijing about surging COVID-19 cases. The explosion in new infections came right as the Chinese government decided to end its years-long “zero-COVID” policy, which brought rolling lockdowns that severely disrupted life for the nation’s 1.4 billion people and its economy.
Those restrictions were abandoned almost overnight, and soon after, Beijing also dropped its ban on domestic travel and started issuing Chinese citizens passports again, effectively permitting them to move about their own country and the world for the first time in years — right before the Chinese New Year holiday. Demand for flights both within China and to vacation destinations around the world, which had been out of reach for years, soared.
But with anecdotal evidence pointing clearly to a precipitous rise in cases and deaths across China, and Beijing dragging its heels in sharing genetic data on its wave of new cases, many countries have imposed mandatory testing and other restrictions on travelers from China over the last week, including the U.S., Japan and many European nations. And the list is growing by the day.
A health worker guides travelers arriving from China in front of a COVID-19 testing center at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, South Korea, January 3, 2023.
JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty
Some of the 27 European Union nations have already imposed mandatory COVID testing on Chinese travelers, with a majority of the countries supporting the move and some health ministers — including from the EU’s biggest economy in Germany — pushing for the rule to be adopted uniformly across the bloc.
As Beijing bristles over the new rules targeting its citizens, threating “countermeasures” and deriding the restrictions as politically motivated, life inside Asia’s biggest nation is distinctly divided.
While COVID-19 infections may be surging, the young, the fit and the healthy have lost no time in reclaiming their freedom and the pleasures of normal life.
Tourists enjoy rime-covered trees along the Songhua River, January 4, 2023, in Jilin, China.
Cang Yan/China News Service/VCG via Getty
But it’s a very different story in China’s overcrowded hospitals, where medical staff are working flat out to treat COVID patients, many of them elderly and un- or under-vaccinated.
In his New Year address, Chinese President Xi Jinping didn’t mention the almost unprecedented protests that erupted in November demanding an end to the zero-COVID restrictions. He also didn’t mention the fact that just days after those protests, his government abruptly lifted the harsh restrictions.
It’s still too early to know if, or how much, Xi’s handling of the pandemic has damaged him or the ruling Communist Party that he leads, but in his speech, he called for unity — and warned of tough challenges ahead.
Exactly how tough the next weeks and months will be isn’t clear, but some experts have speculated that the coronavirus could claim as many as 1 million more lives in China by this summer.
Posts on social media have shown overflowing mortuaries and rural hospitals running out of everything from heating to medicines.
But as the nations imposing new restrictions keep stressing, China isn’t publishing reliable data on its COVID caseload or deaths. Officials even said last month when the draconian rules — which included mandatory regular testing — were dropped, that there would be “no way to keep track” of new cases.
“I think the most we can say is that it’s really bad,” Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease expert at the University of East Anglia in England, told CBS News.
One worry voiced by the nations imposing new travel restrictions has been that a new, more lethal variant could emerge as the virus spreads virtually unchecked across China’s huge population, potentially giving the pandemic a dreaded second wind.
But Hunter said that while the virus “is evolving all the time,” for now, “the information that we do have doesn’t suggest that there is any new variant coming out of China.”
The problem, again, is that the information the global health community has about China’s epidemic is incomplete, at best.
The current variant is also plenty dangerous, especially to the vast majority of China’s people who’ve never had access to the more effective Western-made vaccines — because their government has refused to accept any, even free of charge.
Now China looks poised for a second wave, as millions of city dwellers travel home to the countryside for the Chinese New Year, taking the virus with them.
Elizabeth Palmer has been a CBS News correspondent since August 2000. She has been based in London since late 2003, after having been based in Moscow (2000-03). Palmer reports primarily for the “CBS Evening News.”
China is facing its biggest public health challenge since the start of the coronavirus pandemic more than three years ago. Nine days after the government abruptly abandoned its draconian “zero-COVID” policy, halting mandatory mass-testing and forcible quarantines, COVID-19 is once again spreading like wildfire across the vast country.
On Friday, local media outlets within China‘s tightly controlled press reported some of the first fatalities blamed on COVID since the restrictions were lifted. Two former Chinese state media journalists died in Beijing, on December 8 and 15, according to the outlets. Both were men in their 70s. Official government agencies have not yet confirmed the deaths were due to COVID — no coronavirus fatalities have been officially reported since the controversial zero-COVID policy was lifted.
But the World Health Organization says the strict policy of the last three years had stopped working anyway.
“The explosion of cases in China is not due to the lifting of COVID restrictions,” said the WHO’s head of emergency programs, Dr. Mike Ryan. “The explosion of cases in China had started long before any easing of the zero-COVID policy.”
If so, no one had told the Chinese public.
People line up outside a fever clinic in Beijing, China, to seek testing and treatment amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, December 14, 2022.
YUXUAN ZHANG/AFPTV/AFP/Getty
The sudden U-turn by the ruling Communist Party just over a week ago hurled Beijing into chaos, with people unsure what the new rules were, or why they had been changed so dramatically. At “fever clinics” across the capital, people feeling under the weather have waited and worried for hours to be tested for the virus and get treatment for whatever is ailing them.
For three years, Chinese officials had drilled the message into people’s minds that COVID-19 was a killer. As of nine days ago, the official message suddenly changed, telling people that, unless they’re really sick, they should just stay at home and get better.
Medical workers vaccinate a man against COVID-19 at a vaccination center in Beijing, December 16, 2022.
Ng Han Guan/AP
The about-face in policy and rhetoric has been reinforced by upbeat state messaging, urging people to just get back to normal.
But Beijingers still aren’t buying it. The still-empty streets and businesses of the capital show they’re opting for extreme caution.
“I have to be more careful now,” said Liu, a 26-year-old Beijinger who works in e-commerce. “Because no one else is going to protect me.”
Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan inspects the Capital Institute of Pediatrics in Beijing, China, December 13, 2022, amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Yan Yan/Xinhua/Getty
On a visit to a Beijing hospital, China’s COVID-19 czar Sun Chunlan said the priority now was treatment, not case prevention and elimination. As part of the sweeping changes, the government admitted that it had stopped counting cases and promised a new focus on vaccinating the vulnerable. Many elderly Chinese remain un- or undervaccinated.
Rare protests that erupted across China at the end of November, demanding an end to the rolling lockdowns and other restrictions of the zero-COVID policy, may have nudged the state away from the control measures. But grim economic data — and quite possibly knowledge of a looming infection tsunami — may have been clinchers in Beijing’s decision to pull the 180-degree turn.
A study partly funded by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has warned the country urgently needs to roll out vaccinations and anti-viral drugs if it’s going to avoid 1 million COVID deaths over the coming weeks and months.
Elizabeth Palmer has been a CBS News correspondent since August 2000. She has been based in London since late 2003, after having been based in Moscow (2000-03). Palmer reports primarily for the “CBS Evening News.”
Nearly 6 million Americans have taken Paxlovid for free, courtesy of the federal government. The Pfizer pill has helped prevent many people infected with COVID-19 from being hospitalized or dying, and it may even reduce the risk of developing long COVID. But the government plans to stop footing the bill within months, and millions of people who are at the highest risk of severe illness and are least able to afford the drug — the uninsured and seniors — may have to pay the full price.
And that means fewer people will get the potentially lifesaving treatments, experts said.
“I think the numbers will go way down,” said Jill Rosenthal, director of public health policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. A bill for several hundred dollars or more would lead many people to decide the medication isn’t worth the price, she said.
In response to the unprecedented public health crisis caused by COVID, the federal government spent billions of dollars on developing new vaccines and treatments, to swift success: Less than a year after the pandemic was declared, medical workers got their first vaccines. But as many people have refused the shots and stopped wearing masks, the virus still rages and mutates. In 2022 alone, 250,000 Americans have died from COVID, more than from strokes or diabetes.
But soon the Department of Health and Human Services will stop supplying COVID treatments, and pharmacies will purchase and bill for them the same way they do for antibiotic pills or asthma inhalers. Paxlovid is expected to hit the private market in mid-2023, according to HHS plans shared in an October meeting with state health officials and clinicians. Merck’s Lagevrio, a less-effective COVID treatment pill, and AstraZeneca’s Evusheld, a preventive therapy for the immunocompromised, are on track to be commercialized sooner, sometime in the winter.
The antiviral drug Paxlovid can reduce the risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19.
Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
The U.S. government has so far purchased 20 million courses of Paxlovid, priced at about $530 each, a discount for buying in bulk that Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla called “really very attractive” to the federal government in a July earnings call. The drug will cost far more on the private market, although in a statement to KHN, Pfizer declined to share the planned price. The government will also stop paying for the company’s COVID vaccine next year — those shots will quadruple in price, from the discount rate the government pays of $30 to about $120.
Bourla told investors in November that he expects the move will make Paxlovid and its COVID vaccine “a multibillion-dollars franchise.”
Nearly 9 in 10 people dying from the virus now are 65 or older. Yet federal law restricts Medicare Part D — the prescription drug program that covers nearly 50 million seniors — from covering the COVID treatment pills. The medications are meant for those most at risk of serious illness, including seniors.
Paxlovid and the other treatments are currently available under an emergency use authorization from the FDA, a fast-track review used in extraordinary situations. Although Pfizer applied for full approval in June, the process can take anywhere from several months to years. And Medicare Part D can’t cover any medications without that full stamp of approval.
Paying out-of-pocket would be “a substantial barrier” for seniors on Medicare — the very people who would benefit most from the drug, wrote federal health experts.
“From a public health perspective, and even from a health care capacity and cost perspective, it would just defy reason to not continue to make these drugs readily available,” said Dr. Larry Madoff, medical director of Massachusetts’ Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences. He’s hopeful that the federal health agency will find a way to set aside unused doses for seniors and people without insurance.
In mid-November, the White House requested that Congress approve an additional $2.5 billion for COVID therapeutics and vaccines to make sure people can afford the medications when they’re no longer free. But there’s little hope it will be approved — the Senate voted that same day to end the public health emergency and denied similar requests in recent months.
Many Americans have already faced hurdles just getting a prescription for COVID treatment. Although the federal government doesn’t track who’s gotten the drug, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study using data from 30 medical centers found that Black and Hispanic patients with COVID were much less likely to receive Paxlovid than white patients. (Hispanic people can be of any race or combination of races.) And when the government is no longer picking up the tab, experts predict that these gaps by race, income, and geography will widen.
People in Northeastern states used the drug far more often than those in the rest of the country, according to a KHN analysis of Paxlovid use in September and October. But it wasn’t because people in the region were getting sick from COVID at much higher rates — instead, many of those states offered better access to health care to begin with and created special programs to get Paxlovid to their residents.
About 10 mostly Democratic states and several large counties in the Northeast and elsewhere created free “test-to-treat” programs that allow their residents to get an immediate doctor visit and prescription for treatment after testing positive for COVID. In Massachusetts, more than 20,000 residents have used the state’s video and phone hotline, which is available seven days a week in 13 languages. Massachusetts, which has the highest insurance rate in the country and relatively low travel times to pharmacies, had the second-highest Paxlovid usage rate among states this fall.
States with higher COVID death rates, like Florida and Kentucky, where residents must travel farther for health care and are more likely to be uninsured, used the drug less often. Without no-cost test-to-treat options, residents have struggled to get prescriptions even though the drug itself is still free.
“If you look at access to medications for people who are uninsured, I think that there’s no question that will widen those disparities,” Rosenthal said.
People who get insurance through their jobs could face high copays at the register, too, just as they do for insulin and other expensive or brand-name drugs.
Most private insurance companies will end up covering COVID therapeutics to some extent, said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. After all, the pills are cheaper than a hospital stay. But for most people who get insurance through their jobs, there are “really no rules at all,” she said. Some insurers could take months to add the drugs to their plans or decide not to pay for them.
And the additional cost means many people will go without the medication. “We know from lots of research that when people face cost sharing for these drugs that they need to take, they will often forgo or cut back,” Corlette said.
One group doesn’t need to worry about sticker shock. Medicaid, the public insurance program for low-income adults and children, will cover the treatments in full until at least early 2024.
HHS officials could set aside any leftover taxpayer-funded medication for people who can’t afford to pay the full cost, but they haven’t shared any concrete plans to do so. The government purchased 20 million courses of Paxlovid and 3 million of Lagevrio. Fewer than a third have been used, and usage has fallen in recent months, according to KHN’s analysis of the data from HHS.
Sixty percent of the government’s supply of Evusheld is also still available, although the COVID prevention therapy is less effective against new strains of the virus. The health department in one state, New Mexico, has recommended against using it.
HHS did not make officials available for an interview or answer written questions about the commercialization plans.
The government created a potential workaround when they moved bebtelovimab, another COVID treatment, to the private market this summer. It now retails for $2,100 per patient. The agency set aside the remaining 60,000 government-purchased doses that hospitals could use to treat uninsured patients in a convoluted dose-replacement process. But it’s hard to tell how well that setup would work for Paxlovid: Bebtelovimab was already much less popular, and the FDA halted its use on Nov. 30 because it’s less effective against current strains of the virus.
Federal officials and insurance companies would have good reason to make sure patients can continue to afford COVID drugs: They’re far cheaper than if patients land in the emergency room.
“The medications are so worthwhile,” said Madoff, the Massachusetts health official. “They’re not expensive in the grand scheme of health care costs.”
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
Former President Bill Clinton participates in The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center Presents: Two Presidents, One Extraordinary Evening at Temple Emanu-El on November 10, 2022 in New York City.
Michael Kovac/Getty
Washington — Former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday that he had tested positive for COVID-19 but that his symptoms were mild and he encouraged people to get vaccinated. It is the latest health scare for the 76-year-old, who was briefly hospitalized last year and has undergone several operations since 2004.
“I’m doing fine overall and keeping myself busy at home. I’m grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, which has kept my case mild, and I urge everyone to do the same, especially as we move into the winter months,” Clinton wrote on Twitter.
In October 2021 Clinton spent five nights in a hospital in California for a blood infection, before walking out arm in arm with his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
In 2004, at age 58, he underwent a quadruple bypass operation after doctors found signs of extensive heart disease.
Six years later he had stents implanted in his coronary artery.
This prompted him to adopt a vegetarian diet and to speak out publicly about how his change in food consumption helped him get healthier.
“Maybe if I had… not eaten so many hamburgers and steaks, which I love, maybe if I had, you know, had slightly less stress in my life… maybe it would have been different,” Clinton told ABC News in 2004 after his successful heart surgery.
Clinton led the United States for two presidential terms, from 1993-2001.
In the two decades since leaving the White House he has thrown himself into numerous humanitarian and diplomatic causes.
He traveled the world, not just to receive generous speaking fees and to attend conferences but to visit disaster areas or raise funds for the fight against AIDS.
Clinton, who once called himself “the comeback kid” during the 1992 Democratic Party primary battle, supported his wife’s unsuccessful presidential campaign against Donald Trump in 2016.
Gradually his pace has slowed, and he has been traveling less in recent years.
Beijing — Just weeks after authorities apologized for the death of a three-year-old boy in the western city of Lanzhou, who couldn’t get emergency medical help in time because his neighborhood was one of many under coronavirus lockdowns, a similar tragedy has rekindled anger over China’s draconian “zero-COVID” policy.
A four-year-old girl who was suffering with vomiting and diarrhea in a hotel room where she and her father were under mandatory quarantine this week in Zhengzhou, central China, died after failing to get an ambulance in time, according to Chinese media. The reports said her father waited 11 hours for help after the emergency services dragged their heels in dealing with his case, and when they finally came, she was transported to a hospital 60 miles away.
Local health authorities said they were investigating the incident, which came just days after China revealed some adjustments to its strict anti-COVID measures aimed largely at luring business back to the country. The zero-COVID policy remains very much in place, however, with its stated aim being to quickly identify people who have contracted the virus and their close contacts, and immediately isolate them.
The changes to the policy include a clause stating that people in quarantine zones should not be blocked from access to emergency medical care.
While the latest case has drawn anger, reaction on China’s tightly controlled social media platforms appeared divided. One widely-shared post on the Twitter-like platform Weibo argued that without the zero-COVID policy, the hospital would be flooded with patients and more people would suffer.
But other users disagreed, with one noting that while testing positive for COVID generally does not mean a death sentence, withholding medical help for a sick child can — and in at least two cases now, did — lead to deaths.
While the Chinese hashtag for “girl refused medical help died” had been read 180 million times, it was not showing up in the “trending” column on the platform, one user noted, suggesting possible efforts by the government to bury the discussion.
A barricade blocks off the controlled management area to contain the COVID-19 epidemic, November 14, 2022 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China.
VCG/VCG/Getty
Despite the harsh measures, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases soared to 23,132 as of Thursday, doubling in less than a week to the highest national caseload China has reported in seven months.
Chinese authorities’ response to the rising cases appears to be even more quarantine beds.
Authorities in the city of Guangzhou announced plans on Thursday to build more quarantine facilities with almost 250,000 additional beds in a bid to stem the surge in cases there. The national health commission has broadly backed regional plans to increase quarantine capacities.
Residents have been losing their patience in the sprawling city, parts of which have been under piecemeal lockdowns since early November. Earlier this week, unconfirmed videos on social media appeared to show angry crowds pushing down fences that were confining localized areas in Guangzhou. Fencing off neighborhoods has been a common practice in China since the beginning of the pandemic in areas deemed “risky” for the spread of the virus.
News stories noting that not a single one of the more than 30,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Guangzhou has been severe have gone viral, leading people to question the necessity of the mandatory quarantines. One comment under an article on the theme reads: “The virus is not scary but stupidity is.”
A worker in protective clothing keeps watch near metal barriers set up around shops that were locked down as part of COVID-19 controls in Beijing, China, November 10, 2022.
Andy Wong/AP
Beijing — One day after President Xi Jinping chaired a meeting of China‘s ruling Communist Party leaders on the country’s anti-coronavirus policies, and despite rising cases, the government announced a new 20-point plan on Friday that eased, slightly, its strict “zero-COVID” measures. The announcement came after months of speculation among Chinese residents and international travelers about how far Beijing might go to relax its restrictions, which have virtually closed the country’s borders for years.
In short, China is still far from open for business as usual.
Describing the pandemic as still “severe,” the Chinese government’s new plan fell well short of any fantasies that Beijing might completely lift the restrictions that are now almost exclusive to the country. While most of the world has reopened to travel and countries have allowed travel across their borders, Chinese residents’ daily lives remain disrupted, foreign visitors must quarantine for days, and economic activity is still mired by recurring lockdowns and closures.
It wasn’t clear when the new policy would fully take effect, but under it, international travelers arriving in mainland China will only need to spend five days in centralized quarantine, sometimes in a hotel, sometimes in less-well-equipped isolation camps. Under the rules in place for months, foreign visitors have been required to spend seven days in quarantine.
Once that centralized quarantine is completed, travelers will still be required to spend three days of confinement at their home, or for non-residents, at a facility designated by the government. There was no relaxation of the rules for non-residents and or pleasure seekers, however. So, if you were hoping to come and see the Forbidden City, don’t get your hopes up. Tourist visas still aren’t being issued.
The same shortened quarantine time also applies to people identified as coming into close contact with known positive COVID cases. Health authorities will also stop hunting down or identifying secondary contacts, or contacts of contacts, which will likely significantly reduce the number of residents forced into isolation under the long-standing rules.
The incremental easing of the regulations was clearly aimed at luring foreign business back to China, with penalties on international airlines for bringing confirmed COVID-19 cases into the country also being scrapped.
But a foreign ministry spokesperson, speaking at a regular briefing on Friday, downplayed the relaxation and highlighted the “severe” nature of ongoing outbreaks.
Cases rising
Easing the measures was clear indicator of the financial pressure Beijing’s own policies have brought to bear on the country economically, especially as cases are back on the uptick. The number of confirmed COVID cases in Beijing hit its highest level in more than a year this week, while the nationwide total exceeded 10,000 for the first time since April.
Many public venues in Beijing’s central Chaoyang district, the epicenter of the capital’s current outbreak, have started requiring a negative PCR test result from within the past 24 hours for entry, instead of the usual 72 hours. Although there has been no official citywide order announced, many parks, shopping centers and schools have been closed.
People line up for COVID-19 screening at an apparel wholesale market enclosed by a temporary wall in Guangzhou, in south China’s Guangdong province, November 10, 2022.
JULIEN TAN/Feature China/Future Publishing/Getty
In the southwestern megacity of Chongqing, cases hit a new high of 783 on Thursday. Public transportation was locked down in some areas of the metropolis.
The southeastern city of Guangzhou has seen the most cases recently. Its Haizhu district had already been under lockdown for a week, and that local lockdown was extended on Friday at least through the weekend.
Given that the existing measures have failed to quash the city’s outbreak, many worry that all of Guangzhou — which has a population of more than 15 million — could be placed under a citywide lockdown like the one Shanghai residents endured in the spring.
Security guards keep order at Shanghai Disney Resort, October 31, 2022 in Shanghai, China.
VCG/VCG via Getty
Beijing — Visitors to Shanghai Disneyland were temporarily blocked from leaving the park on Monday as hundreds of thousands of people were screened for COVID-19 infection over a single case. The testing extended to more than 400,000 people, the city government announced Tuesday.
The park closed Monday for testing of staff and visitors, Walt Disney Co. and the government said in separate statements. The city health bureau said guests all tested negative and were allowed to leave by 8:30 p.m., but one visitor from elsewhere in China told the Reuters news agency she didn’t make it out until 10 p.m.
Marvis He told Reuters she and her companion had flown in from the city of Shenzhen to enjoy the Disney park’s Halloween fireworks.
“I feel disappointed, we waited so long in the park… but we didn’t get to see anything and only got to get out at 10 p.m.,” she told Reuters as she left.
“We were also cold and hungry,” added her friend.
Reuters quoted city authorities as saying the resort shut its gates after authorities became aware of a 31-year-old woman who had visited the park in recent days testing positive for the coronavirus.
Medical workers carry out COVID-19 nucleic acid testing on tourists at Shanghai Disney Resort on October 31, 2022 in Shanghai, China.
VCG/VCG via Getty
Some 1.3 million residents of Shanghai’s downtown Yangpu district had been ordered to stay at home for virus testing on Friday, and it was expected to be related to the same case.
President Xi Jinping’s government has stuck to its severe “zero-COVID” strategy even as most of the rest of the world has dropped anti-coronavirus restrictions. The draconian measures have seen entire cities, including Shanghai, shut down this year to isolate every suspected case.
Also Tuesday, authorities in the southern territory of Macao were carrying out virus tests on all of its 700,000 residents after one case was found last week.
“Zero-COVID” has kept infection rates relatively low but at a high cost as businesses struggle with repeated shutdowns.
Hong Kong’s main stock market index surged 5.2% on Tuesday after a comment circulated on Chinese social media that said the ruling Communist Party might set up a “reopening committee” to look at ways to wind down the anti-virus controls.
A foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, told reporters he was “not aware of what you just mentioned” when asked about the rumor.
Outbreaks in Shanghai in March led to a shutdown that confined most of its 25 million people to their homes for two months.
The city government appealed to anyone who had visited the Shanghai Disney Resort since Thursday to undergo three days of nucleic acid testing and avoid gathering in groups.
Disney said Monday parts of the resort closed due to anti-virus regulations but gave no indication visitors were kept inside. It said Shanghai Disneyland, Disneytown and Wishing Star Park were closed while two hotels were operating normally.
Some rides and other amusements kept operating Monday while visitors were tested, according to social media posts.
“Please return and take a tour in the park,” a video on the popular Sina Weibo platform showed an employee in a mask saying to guests. “The park’s gates are all closed temporarily, and you cannot leave now.”
Another video on Sina Weibo showed technicians in white protective suits who appeared to be taking throat swabs from guests after dark while police watched and a fireworks display lit up the sky behind them.
“The most beautiful nucleic acid detection point,” the account user wrote.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has tested positive for COVID-19, the public health agency announced Saturday. Walensky tested positive Friday night and is experiencing mild symptoms, the agency said in a statement.
According to the statement, Walensky is up to date with her vaccines. The agency says people are “up to date” when they have received the primary series of a COVID-19 vaccine and the most recent recommended booster dose.
Walensky is isolating at home and plans to participate in meetings virtually, the CDC said.
Beijing — Chinese censors on Friday scrubbed from the internet 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 last major country committed to a zero-tolerance anti-coronavirus strategy, responding to dozens of outbreaks with lockdowns and sending entire neighborhoods out to makeshift quarantine facilities.
The public has chafed against virus restrictions, sometimes responding to fresh lockdowns with protests, while scuffles have broken out between citizens and officials.
Posts circulated on Chinese social media this week saying a 14-year-old girl had died in the central city of Ruzhou after falling ill in a quarantine facility and being denied prompt medical care.
A screengrab from a video posted on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, in mid-October 2022, shows an unidentified man next to a 14-year-old girl who was said to have died after her family’s pleas for medical attention went unheeded at a COVID-19 quarantine facility in Ruzhou, central China.
The reports caused renewed anger at a sensitive time for the country’s rulers. China‘s political elite are holding a key Communist Party meeting in Beijing this week, expected to secure a historic third term for President Xi Jinping, with the country’s propaganda and security apparatus on high alert for 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 screamed for help.
“At the start the kid was fine… then she went (into quarantine) for four days and had a high fever and now she’s gone,” a woman described in other videos as the child’s aunt tells viewers, crying.
The woman says the girl “had convulsions, vomiting and a high fever, and didn’t get medical attention in time,” complaining that local health authorities did not respond 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 were not answered.
Chinese media, which have given cursory attention to similar lockdown-related scandals in the past, were noticeably silent this week on the Ruzhou case.
By Friday afternoon, censors had removed nearly all traces of the incident from the Chinese internet, disabling Weibo hashtags for “Ruzhou Girl” and “Girl from Ruzhou dies in quarantine,” and removing most of the videos mentioning the girl’s alleged death.
The hashtag page for “Ruzhou Girl” had recorded 255,000 views and 158 posts on Friday morning, according to the official statistics at the top of the page, though only four posts remained visible before the page was blocked completely later in the day.
The quarantine facility at the Shanghai New International Expo Center in eastern China is seen in an April 1, 2022 file photo. There are dozens of COVID-19 quarantine facilities around China, where people infected with the virus, suspected of possible infection, or merely suspected of contact with possible cases are brought by authorities as part of the country’s draconian “zero-COVID” policy.
Ding Ting/Xinhua/Getty
“Have the lessons of Shanghai been forgotten so completely?” one of the last remaining posts on the page asked, referring to the megacity’s lockdown in the spring that left people without adequate food and supplies.
The poster demanded to know why “there wasn’t even a doctor to care for a girl who needed to see one.”
The incident comes a month after 27 people died in a traffic accident while they were being ferried before dawn to a quarantine facility in rural Guizhou province.
And in the lead-up to the Congress, censors removed virtually all references to reports of a rare protest in Beijing, that involved banners denouncing President Xi, as well as the COVID policies.
