Beijing: The fifth anniversary of the first known death from Covid-19 passed unnoticed in China on Saturday, with no official remembrance in a country where the pandemic is a taboo subject.
On January 11, 2020, health officials in the central Chinese city of Wuhan announced that a 61-year-old man had died of pneumonia caused by a previously unknown virus.
The revelation came after the government reported dozens of infections over several weeks with the pathogen later named SARS-CoV-2 and believed to be Covid-19.
This then triggered a global pandemic that has killed more than seven million people and profoundly altered lifestyles around the world, including China.
On Saturday, however, there appeared to be no official commemorative event on Beijing’s tightly controlled state media.
The ruling Communist Party kept a tight leash on public discussion throughout its zero-Covid policy, and has eschewed reflections on the hardline curbs since dramatically ditching them at the end of 2022.
On social media, too, many users seemed unaware of the anniversary.
Some videos circulating on Douyin – the Chinese edition of TikTok – indicate that the date repeats the official edition of events.
“Time passes”
And on the popular Weibo platform, users who gravitated to the former account of Li Wenliang — the whistleblower doctor who was investigated by police for spreading early information about the virus — did not directly reference the anniversary.
“Dr. Li, it’s been a year,” read one comment on Saturday. “How time flies. “
There have also been few online commemorations in Hong Kong, where Beijing largely silenced opposition voices when it imposed a sweeping national security law on the semi-autonomous city in 2020.
Unlike other countries, China has not built major memorials to those who lost their lives during the pandemic.
Little is known about the identity of the first Covid victim, other than that he visited a seafood market in Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have circulated during the initial outbreak.
Days after her death, other countries reported their first cases of the disease, showing that official efforts to engage her had failed.
China was subsequently criticized by Western governments for allegedly covering up the early transmission of the virus and erasing evidence of its origins, while Beijing vehemently maintained that it had acted decisively and with full transparency.
According to the WHO, China has officially reported nearly 100 million Covid cases and 122,000 deaths to date, although the true number will likely never be known.
In 2023, Beijing declared a “decisive victory” over Covid and called its reaction “a miracle in human history. ”
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