In one video, during the lockdown in Wuhan, China, she filmed a hospital hallway lined with rolling beds, the patients hooked up to blue oxygen tanks. In another, she panned over a community health centre, noting that a man said he was charged for a coronavirus test, even though residents believed the tests would be free.

At the time, Zhang Zhan, a 37-year-old former lawyer turned citizen journalist, embodied the Chinese people's hunger for unfiltered information about the epidemic. Now, she has become a symbol of the government's efforts to deny its early failings in the crisis and promote a victorious narrative instead.