BEIJING — China has suspended or shut down the social media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s policies on the COVID-19 outbreak as the country prepares to open up further.
Popular social media platform Sina Weibo said it dealt with 12,854 violations, added attacks on experts and medical workers, and issued temporary or permanent bans on 1,120 accounts.
The ruling Communist Party had relied heavily on the medical network to justify its serious closures, quarantine measures and mass testing, all of which it abandoned last month, prompting a surge in new cases that pushed medical resources to the limit. Direct denunciation and strict limits on freedom of expression.
The company “will continue to accentuate investigations and cleanup of all kinds of illegal content, and create a harmonious and user-friendly network environment for most users,” Sina Weibo said Thursday.
Criticism has largely focused on strict enforcement of the rules, adding unlimited travel restrictions that have noted that others are confined to their homes for weeks, infrequently locked up internally without enough food or medical care. Anger was also expressed over the requirement that anyone who potentially tested positive or had been in contact with such a user would be held in a box hospital, where overcrowding, poor nutrition and hygiene were commonly cited.
Social and economic prices eventually led to rare street protests in Beijing and other cities, influencing the party’s resolve to temporarily relax stricter measures.
As part of the latest changes, China will no longer charge fraud fees against others accused of violating border quarantine rules, according to a statement issued Saturday by five government breakdowns.
The last detainees will be released and the seized goods will be returned, the statement said.
The changes “were made after very well examining the harm of behaviors to society and are aimed at adapting to new situations and preventing epidemics,” the official website of China Daily newspaper said in a report on the notice.
China now faces a surge in cases and hospitalizations in major cities and is bracing for further spread in less evolved areas with the onset of the Lunar New Year fever, which is expected to begin in the coming days. By shrinking, the government says it expects domestic exercise and air to double compared to the same time last year, bringing the overall numbers back to those of the 2019 Christmas season before the pandemic hit.
The Transport Ministry on Friday called on ers to reduce gatherings, especially if they involve the elderly, pregnant women, young children and others with underlying conditions.
People traveling on public transport are also asked to wear masks and pay special attention to their physical condition and non-public hygiene, Vice Minister Xu Chengguang told reporters at a press conference.
However, China is moving forward with a plan to end mandatory quarantines for others arriving from Sunday.
Beijing also plans to remove the requirement for students from city schools to test negative for COVID-19 to enter campus when categories resume on Feb. 13 after the holidays. While schools will be able to change categories online in case of new outbreaks. , will have to resume in-person instruction as soon as possible, the city’s school office said Friday.
However, the end of mass testing, a very limited amount of basic data such as deaths, infections and severe cases, and the possible emergence of new variants have led governments to institute virus testing requirements for travelers from China.
The World Health Organization has also expressed fears over China’s lack of knowledge, while the U. S. has not been able to do so. The U. S. government calls for a negative verification result for travelers from China within 48 hours prior to departure.
The Chinese fitness government releases a count of new cases, severe cases and deaths, but those figures only come with officially displayed cases and use a very limited definition of COVID-related deaths.
Officials say that since the government ended mandatory screening and allowed others with mild symptoms to control themselves and in their homes, it can no longer provide a full picture of the prestige of the lacheck outbreak.
On Saturday, the National Health Commission reported 10,681 new domestic cases, bringing the total number of cases shown in the country to 482,057. Three new deaths were reported in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 5,267.
The figures are only a fraction of those announced by the United States, which estimated its death toll at more than a million among some 101 million cases.
But they are also much smaller than estimates published by some local governments. Zhejiang, an east coast province, said Tuesday it sees about 1 million new cases per day.
China said testing requirements imposed by foreign governments, most recently Germany and Sweden, are not based on science and have threatened unspecified countermeasures. His spokesmen said the situation was low and rejected allegations of unpreparedness for reopening.
Despite those claims, the Health Commission on Saturday established regulations to improve surveillance for viral mutations, adding urban wastewater. Long-standing regulations required greater data collection from hospitals and local government fitness departments and intensified controls on “pneumonia of unknown causes. “”
If a variant looks like an outbreak, it is detected by genetic sequencing of the virus.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, China has shared 4144 images with GISAID, a global coronavirus information platform. That’s just 0. 04% of reported cases, a rate more than a hundred times lower than that of the U. S. It is almost four times smaller than neighboring Mongolia. .
Meanwhile, Hong Kong also plans to reopen some of its border crossings with mainland China on Sunday and allow tens of thousands of people to cross the day without being quarantined.
The semi-autonomous city in southern China has been hit hard by the virus, and its land and sea border checkpoints with the mainland have been largely closed for only about 3 years. Despite the risk, reopening is expected to provide much more. -necessary seasoning for Hong Kong’s tourism and retail sectors.
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