Shanghai officials over the next few days will further restrict access to food and hospitals in the city, the most severe phase of its extended lockdown yet. BBC News has the story.
Commercial food deliveries are not allowed and access to hospitals for all but emergencies must first be approved. Neighbours of COVID-19 cases and others living close by are also being forced into government quarantine facilities. Shanghai is now in its seventh week of city-wide restrictions.
Confirmed cases have fallen significantly from their peak, but authorities have not yet been able to hit the target of what they call “societal zero”, where no cases are reported outside of quarantine facilities.
Despite the tougher measures, Shanghai officials insist that people living in half the city’s districts are now free to leave their homes and walk around.
State media has shown propaganda videos of departing medical workers visiting city landmarks together and taking photographs.
Official notices from local committees of the ruling Communist Party, seen by the BBC, detail several restrictions imposed under what officials call “silent periods” for the next three days. These include only permitting Government food deliveries, not allowing residents to “step out” of their front doors and requiring approval from the committee for anyone other than emergency cases to access hospitals…
The tightened measures come just days after China’s president Xi Jinping re-iterated his commitment to the controversial ‘Zero-Covid’ strategy. In a paper published in the health journal the Lancet earlier this week, senior Chinese health officials said the lockdown would “buy time to vaccinate more people”.
Their comments come after the head of the World Health Organisation called China’s Zero-Covid strategy unsustainable.
“When we talk about Zero-Covid, we don’t think that it’s sustainable, considering the behaviour of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday at a news conference.
The clip was widely shared on Chinese social media before being blocked by censors. More than two years after COVID-19 first emerged here officials figures show around 90% of the population nationwide has been vaccinated. But only 38% of the more vulnerable – those over 60 – in Shanghai have the full protection [sic] of three vaccinations.
Buy time to vaccinate? How much time do they need, if 16 months isn’t enough?
This lockdown thing is really starting to get out of hand…
Worth reading in full.
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Why should we (not “the Government” which has no money of its own) fund a 30% rebate? Why not just withold the money, with the universities taking the hit as the private sector has done?
Spot on.
The education industry along with our bleeding sainted NHS have been an utter disgrace throughout the Scamdemic and with only a few commendable exceptions proven to be spineless.
Yes, the universities and the NHS cheerleaded the lockdown and the suppression of low-cost safe and effective treatments – they should at least pay their fair share of the cost of those policies.
“A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Universities have a strong track record in delivering excellent blended tuition, and we have been clear from the start of the pandemic that the quality and quantity should not drop.”
What utter bollocks. The detachment from reality is immense.
Even a certified moron knows that the quality of education has been shockingly compromised by the idiocy of the Big Panic. To pretend otherwise is just lying, reminiscent of the worst sort of totalitarian propaganda.
This isn’t an opinion. It’s a fact, gleaned from both staff and students at Russell Group and other universities.
Spot on.
The D of E comment is Pravda esque.
Utter groupthink garbage.
So the LSE is happy with a situation where the debts “would be repaid only by the highest earning graduates.”
Great, let’s “educate” the masses and tell them they can have it for free by not bothering to aim for a well paid job. Yeah. It’s exactly this kind of backwards thinking which leads to these “intelligent” people walking around in the fresh air with surgical masks on their faces.
Yadda, yadda!
It would be 6.2 per cent plus inflation, I believe. It’s going to be a staggering percentage of, effectively, graduate tax on English students only.
On a related point, why would anyone start university this year? We know the experience will be a nannied nightmare, with little proper teaching. Defer entry. Get a job, any job. Read and learn in your own time.
Exactly. I have a 14 year old son and unless things go back to how they were I doubt if I’ll be encouraging to go to university in 4 years’ time!
Unless the lad loves academic study entirely for its own sake, he’ll be infinitely better off with an apprenticeship.
Even if he is truly academic, he won’t get anything worth having from universities if they are anything like they are at the moment. Except possibly the Open University.
Excellent advice!
The country is bankrupt
Why are they preventing people going abroad? To prevent money leaving the country
Remember the 1970’s and Healey going cap in hand to the IMF
Healey introduced a £50 limit on taking money out of the country
This time there will be no IMF bailout as the IMF is also bankrupt
The party is over
Gimme a discount but jack-up the interest rate?
What kind of innumerate nonsense is this?
These buffoons should be given failing grades in whatever course they are on.
Which rather points up the sub-standard quality of the education these youngsters are receiving from the Bliar “educashun, educashun, educashun” legacy system which he imposed on this country.
Majority of students will never repay the fees so it’s not that helpful
Better to offer them a free extra year of proper teaching and full university life
Michael et al, please ask Glen Bishop the second year Maths student at the University of Nottingham to calculate why this is an incredibly short-sighted idea.
As loyal Outer Party members, academic and non-academic higher education staff have been instrumental in driving the Covid orthodoxy, and not just within universities. It is significant that so many of them crop up on the creepy committees currently running the country.