Sébastien Le Belzic, edited by Nathanaël Bentura 06:31, April 05, 2022

China is overtaken by the Covid.

Contaminations with the Omicron variant are exploding all over the country.

A new variant also worries the authorities… In Shanghai, the 26 million inhabitants remain confined, sick children and babies are isolated from their parents.

Huge quarantine centers are opening up everywhere.

A video of crying children, separated from their parents when they are carriers of the virus, made the rounds of social networks in China and provoked indignation, as did the opening of several gigantic quarantine centers.

In China, the Covid-19 epidemic is experiencing a strong rebound, 13,000 cases in one day, the highest number since the peak of the first wave in 2020. 7,000 beds have thus been installed in the Shanghai exhibition center without no privacy.

Those who are not sick are confined and their daily lives are punctuated by calls from loudspeakers ordering them to be tested.

“We feel a growl rising”

“The Chinese are today much more afraid of quarantine centers and separations than of the virus”, assured Frédéric, a French expatriate in Shanghai, at the microphone of Europe 1. “In Shanghai, we feel a discontent rising, because unlike Wuhan, where we were dealing with a new unknown virus, the inhabitants still understood that they were locked up when most cases are asymptomatic,” he added.

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95% of cases are indeed asymptomatic, but the authorities, faithful to their zero Covid strategy, prefer to lock everyone up.

Especially since a new variant has been discovered in the Shanghai region.

A mutation of Omicron, whose dangerousness is still under study.