Chinese censors deleted a misleading quote by a senior Communist Party official published in state media Monday, which said the country's stringent zero-Covid policy will last "for the next five years".
Beijing's Communist Party chief Cai Qi on Monday said that “for the next five years, Beijing will resolutely implement Covid-19 pandemic control measures and uphold the 'zero-Covid' policy to prevent imported cases from coming in and domestic cases from rebounding," Beijing Daily published. The notice was widely shared on social media and sparked confusion and alarm. But soon the reference to “five years” was removed from most online publications, and a related hashtag on Weibo was deleted, The Guardian reported.
The state media removed the reference to 'five years' to subdue the backlash the notice generated. CNN reported that while the quote relayed in the Beijing Daily was misleading, Cai Qi did discuss at length the possibility of keeping zero-covid policies in place in the capital over the next five-year period.
Residential inspections, normalisation of regular testing, and controlling the spread of the virus by isolating as soon as a Covid-19 case is reported are the steps that will be followed by city authorities as part of its prevention and control coordination mechanism