Shanghai announced on Monday the death of three people from Covid-19 in the city since the start of strict confinement at the end of March, despite several hundred thousand positive cases in recent weeks.
Economic capital of the country, populated by 25 million inhabitants, Shanghai has been affected for several weeks by an epidemic outbreak linked to the highly contagious Omicron variant. It led to partial containment at the end of March, then total since the beginning of April.
No deaths had been reported so far, which had raised some questions in view of the low rate of vaccination among seniors.
Strongly denounced conditions
Many residents of Shanghai, confined, have had difficulty in recent weeks to stock up on fresh produce, in particular due to the lack of people to deliver the goods.
Many also fear being sent to quarantine centers, with haphazard hygiene, where people who test positive, even asymptomatic ones, are sent to be isolated there.
For lack of space, the authorities have in some cases requisitioned private homes to place these people there, which caused clashes between police and residents last week.
Health before the economy
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is making the low death toll a political argument, showing that it puts people’s lives above economic considerations, unlike Western democracies where the coronavirus has claimed countless lives.
For its part, the Ministry of Health stresses that easing restrictions too much could overwhelm the health system and cause millions of deaths. In particular because the vaccination rate remains low among seniors: only a little more than half of those over 80 have received a booster dose.
Since the start of the pandemic, China has reported only 4,641 officially coronavirus-related deaths. An extremely low figure compared to the number of inhabitants of the country (1.4 billion inhabitants, editor’s note).
