Over 4.5 million residents of Jilin are in lockdown starting Monday
Some 4.5 million residents of China’s northeastern city of Jilin will have to follow a stay-at-home order starting Monday night as China announces a three-day lockdown to curb the spread of the virus, amid the country’s largest Covid-19 outbreak in two years.
On Sunday, China recorded over four thousand new Covid cases, the highest number since the outbreak of the pandemic two years ago. Two-thirds of the recorded deaths occurred in China’s Jilin province, which borders Russia and North Korea
On Saturday, Beijing reported the deaths of two covid-positive patients in Jilin province. Both fatalities, according to Chinese authorities, had underlying health conditions and didn’t die due to their coronavirus infections. Before that, not a single covid-related death had been registered in China in more than a year.
Since March 11, Changchun, Jilin Province’s capital, has also been under restrictions. Its nine million people are only allowed to leave their houses to buy groceries, and not more often than once every two days.
Meanwhile, Beijing has eased the restrictions in the South of the country. China’s tech hub Shenzhen will partly lift its lockdown, imposed last week. The city’s public transport fully resumed on Monday but some non-essential businesses remain closed.
As China is recording the spike in covid cases, Beijing has reacted by sacking several high-ranking officials in Jilin Province, including the mayor of Jilin City. Zhang Lifeng, the Communist Party secretary and top manager at Jilin Agricultural Science and Technology University, was fired following an on-campus outbreak. The state-run Global Times paper said he was dismissed for “negligence and an ineffective response” to the cluster of infections. Similarly, six officials were fired in the southern coastal province of Guangdong, including a deputy director of the provincial public-security department.
RT (Russia Today) is a state-owned news organization funded by the Russian government. The information provided by this news source is being included by the Libertarian Hub not as an endorsement of the Russian government, but rather because it is being actively censored by Big Tech, Western governments and the corporate press. During times of conflict it is imperative that we have access to both sides of the story so we can form our own opinions, even if both sides are spewing their own propaganda. The censorship of RT, despite likely being a propaganda outfit for the Russian government, reduces our ability to hear one side of the conflict. For that reason, the Libertarian Hub will temporarily republish the RSS feed from RT. Visit https://rt.com
