Shanghai residents clash with police over the Covid policy.
Key Takeaways:
- In videos posted on social media, residents in Shanghai were seen disputing with hazmat-suited cops who ordered them to relinquish their homes to Covid-19 sufferers.
- As the city tackled the outbreak, Shanghai reached a new high for symptomatic Covid-19 infections but experienced a tiny drop in the overall number of cases.
Videos on social media showed Shanghai residents squabbling with hazmat-suited cops who ordered them to give their homes to Covid-19 patients, providing a rare peek into the megacity's growing anger with China's rigid viral response.
Since the height of the first virus wave in Wuhan over two years ago, the city of 25 million people and China's economic engine room has become the epicenter of the country's largest outbreak, unsettling the tight zero-Covid policy.
Since early April, some of those trapped in Shanghai have taken to social media to complain about food shortages and overzealous officials who have forced them into state quarantine, challenging China's censorship system, which removes dissenting viewpoints from the internet almost as soon as they appear.
According to videos circulated late Thursday, residents outside a property were seen shouting at officials, brandishing "police" shields as the cops attempted to break through their line late Thursday.
Police appear to make many arrests in one video footage, while citizens accuse them of "beating people."
According to Zhangjiang Group, the housing complex's developer, the situation began when officials ordered 39 households to vacate their homes so that viral sufferers could be housed in the development.
In one live clip, a woman can be heard crying and asking, "why are they taking an old person away?" as officials appear to put someone into a car. The renters were compensated and relocated within the same compound, according to Zhangjiang Group.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Shanghai set a new high for symptomatic Covid-19 infections but saw a slight decline in the overall number of cases as the city battled the outbreak.
Although the total number of infections in Shanghai was down from more than 27,000 the day before, the count of symptomatic cases increased to 3,200 from 2,573 the day before. On Thursday, 3,472 locally transmitted confirmed illnesses and 20,694 asymptomatic carriers were detected on the mainland.
The majority of the Covid-19 restrictions will be lifted in South Korea.
As Seoul progressively wiggles out of an Omicron outbreak that officials say is stabilizing, South Korea will relax most pandemic restrictions, including indoor gathering bans.
The FDA in the United States has approved the first breath test for infection.
ACCORDING TO THE FDA, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted an emergency use authorization for the first device to detect Covid-19 in breath samples.
According to the FDA, the InspectIR Covid-19 Breathalyser is roughly the size of a carry-on bag and can be utilized in doctor's offices, hospitals, and mobile testing locations.