Shanghai reports first Covid-19 deaths since start of lockdown
he three elderly, unvaccinated patients who died had severe underlying conditions, health authorities said.
Shanghai’s health authorities said three Covid-19 patients have died, the first coronavirus-related deaths to be reported in the Chinese financial capital since a widespread outbreak last month prompted a citywide lockdown.
In a report published on Monday on its official social-media account, the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission said the deaths were of an 89-year-old woman, a 91-year-old woman and a 91-year-old man. The three patients had been admitted to local hospitals, the commission said.
Shanghai registered about 22,000 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, down from almost 25,000 the previous day, the commission reported. Daily counts have remained over 20,000 for 11 days in a row as the city struggles to keep the outbreak under control.
In all three deaths revealed on Monday, the city’s health authorities said the patients suffered from multiple severe underlying conditions, including diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. The patients hadn’t been vaccinated, according to the commission.
The announcement of the deaths comes more than two weeks after staff and relatives said patients at some of the city’s aged-care centres were dying for unknown reasons amid unreported Covid-19 outbreaks. Chinese media reports on the earlier deaths have been censored. Shanghai’s government hasn’t responded to several requests for comment about those cases.
Reports of deaths among the elderly are potentially sensitive in Shanghai, which is home to four million residents above age 65. Vaccination rates among China’s elderly population are relatively low, sparking fears that a widespread outbreak could produce a high mortality rate.
Those fears are a driving force behind China’s maintenance of a zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19, even as much of the rest of the world has decided to live with the virus. Authorities in several cities around China have imposed full or partial lockdowns in recent weeks to try to suffocate local outbreaks.
China last reported new Covid-19 deaths on March 19 – two people in the northeastern rustbelt province of Jilin – the first such acknowledged deaths in more than a year.
Hemmed in by some of the country’s most stringent lockdown measures, many of Shanghai’s 26 million people have found themselves struggling to procure food and other necessities – a situation that has strained nerves and eroded trust in the government.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party has touted its hardline pandemic approach as proof that it places human life above material concerns – unlike many Western democracies, which it argues have sacrificed lives by failing to stop the virus.
Beijing has also acknowledged that dropping restrictions could let the pathogen run amok through its creaking and under-resourced healthcare system, potentially causing millions of deaths. But experts say political considerations are also at play, with the party staking a degree of its legitimacy on crushing emerging outbreaks in a year that will likely see President Xi Jinping secure a precedent-busting third term in office.
“This is a sensitive and critical year for the regime,” Lynette Ong, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, told Agence France-Presse.
“China has always given so much prominence to social stability, and a health crisis is a potentially big disrupter.”
Those concerns may have continued to motivate officials in Shanghai, who have implemented lockdown curbs “to the point that it becomes silly” even as the highly transmissible Omicron strain refuses to be quelled, Professor Ong said.
Videos on social media have illustrated creeping desperation in the city, with clips showing residents scuffling with hazmat-suited police and bursting through barricades demanding food.
The Wall Street Journal