As Shanghai deals with a “draconian lockdown” with Beijing looking like its next in line, Human Rights Watch representative says people are suffering more from the lockdown than they are from Covid

China’s biggest city and financial hub, Shanghai enters its fifth week of strict lockdown as authorities try to cut Covid transmission and get the cases to zero across the country.

Citizens are restricted to their homes, only allowed to leave homes to get tested. This has put the city in food shortages with people relying on the city to be fed.

The country has also been evacuating cities and relocating residents to quarantine facilities.

This comes as the country has begun mass testing of Beijing with many residents already stocking up on supplies, preparing for a Shanghai style lockdown.

Human Rights Watch representative, Yaqiu Wang agrees that China’s Covid policy has gone too far and is now instilling fear in the population.

“If you look at Shanghai, given this tariff – very draconian lockdown – a lot of people have died, not from Covid but from not being able to access medical care for their non Covid related illnesses,” Wang says.

“People couldn’t go to hospital to have their kidney dialysis because they can’t leave their compound.”

She says people are suffering “tremendously” because of the lockdown.

In recent updates, authorities have begun putting up fences outside residential buildings.

This has sparked outrage with many questioning the well being of Shanghai residents but Wang says that we’re still not seeing the full picture.

“Let’s talk about the people who don’t have a huge following on social media, who don’t use social media, who don’t even have a cell phone- we have no idea about their stories,” she says.

Shanghai has recorded 190 deaths from Covid in the current outbreak. However, most of them were elderly un-vaccinated residents.

In a country that’s made PCR and quarantining mandatory, why is vaccination for the elderly not mandatory?

Wang says that China’s Covid zero policy was so successful that President Xi Jinping made it a political move to show that his governance model was better than the democratic chaotic US where Covid was “raging”.

“When it becomes a political issue it’s very hard to walk back,” she says

While US’s suffering triggered an urgency to get vaccinated, Wang says people in China were living a normal life with zero cases.

“In China, when the vaccination campaign started there was no Covid so older people didn’t have the incentive to get vaccinated.”

Rijul Baath contributed to this report