Residents of a city in China’s far west Xinjiang region say they are experiencing hunger, forced quarantines and dwindling supplies of medicine and daily necessities after more than 40 days in a virus lockdown.
Hundreds of posts from Ghulja riveted users of Chinese social media last week, with residents sharing videos of empty fridges, feverish children, and people screaming from their windows.
The dire conditions and food shortages are reminiscent of a harsh lockdown in Shanghai this spring, when thousands of residents posted online, complaining they were delivered rotting vegetables or denied critical medical care.
But unlike in Shanghai, a glittering, cosmopolitan metropolis of 20 million people and home to many foreigners, the harsh lockdowns in smaller cities such as Ghulja have received less attention.
As more infectious variants of the coronavirus creep into China, flare-ups have become increasingly common. Under China’s “zero-COVID” strategy, tens of millions or people are experiencing rolling lockdowns, paralyzing the economy and making travel uncertain.
The lockdown in Ghulja is also evoking fears of police brutality among the Uyghurs, the Turkic ethnic group native to Xinjiang. For years, the region has been the target of a sweeping security crackdown, ensnaring huge numbers of Uyghurs and other largely Muslim minorities in a vast network of camps and prisons. An earlier lockdown in Xinjiang was particularly tough, with forced medication, arrests, and residents being hosed down with disinfectant.
Yasinuf, a Uyghur studying at a university in Europe, said his mother-in-law sent fearful voice messages this weekend saying she was being forced into centralized quarantine because of a mild cough. The officers coming for her reminded her, she said, of the time her husband was taken to a camp for over two years.
“It’s judgement day,” she sighed, in an audio recording reviewed by The Associated Press. “We don’t know what’s going to happen this time. All we can do now is to trust our creator.”
Food has been in short supply. Yasinuf said his parents told him they were running low on food supplies, despite having stocked up before the lockdown. With no deliveries, and barred from using their backyard ovens for fear of spreading the virus, his parents have been surviving on uncooked dough made of flour, water and salt. Yasinuf declined to give his surname for fear of retribution against his relatives.
He hasn’t been able to study or sleep in recent days, he said, because the thought of his relatives back in Ghulja keeps him up at night.
“Their voices are always in my head, saying things like I’m hungry, please help us,” he said. “This is the 21st century, this is unthinkable.”
Nyrola Elima, a Uyghur from Ghulja, said her father was rationing their dwindling supply of tomatoes, sharing one each day with her 93-year-old grandmother. Another relative, her aunt, was panicking because she lacked milk to feed her 2-year-old grandson.
Last week at a news conference, the local governor apologized for “shortcomings and deficiencies” in the government’s response to the coronavirus, alluding to “blind spots and missed spots,” and promised improvements.
But even as authorities acknowledged the complaints, the censors worked to silence them. Posts were wiped from social media. Some videos were deleted and reposted dozens of times as netizens battled censors online.
Multiple people in the region told AP the posts online reflected the dire nature of the lockdown, but declined to detail their own situations, saying that they feared retribution.
On Monday, local police announced the arrests of six people for “spreading rumors” about the lockdown, including posts about a dead child and an alleged suicide, which they said “incited opposition” and “disrupted social order.”
Leaked directives from government offices show that workers are being ordered to avoid negative information and spread “positive energy” instead. One directed state media to film “smiling seniors” and “children having fun” in neighborhoods emerging from the lockdown.
“Those who maliciously hype, spread rumors, and make unreasonable accusations should be dealt with in accordance with the law,” one notice warned.
The AP was unable to independently verify the notices. The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As the authorities mobilize, conditions have improved for some. One resident, reached by phone, said food deliveries resumed after stopping for a couple of weeks. Residents in her compound are now allowed to talk walks in their courtyard for a few hours a day.
“The situation is gradually improving, it’s gotten a lot better,” she said.
Authorities have ordered mass testing and district lockdowns in cities across China in recent weeks, from Sanya on tropical Hainan island to southwest Chengdu, to the northern port city of Dalian.
In the city of Guiyang, in mountainous southern Guizhou province, a zoo put out a call for help last week, asking for pork, chicken, apples, watermelons, carrots and other produce out of concern they could run out of food for their animals.
Elsewhere in the city, residents in one neighborhood complained of hunger and missing food deliveries, prompting a surge of comments online. Local officials apologized, saying that despite their best efforts, they were overwhelmed.
“Due to lack of experience and inappropriate methods,” they said in a public notice, “the supply of basic necessities wasn’t enough, bringing inconvenience to everyone. We are deeply sorry.”
President Joe Biden has the same authority to impose a COVID-19 vaccine requirement on federal workers that private employers have for their employees, an administration lawyer told a federal appeals court Tuesday.
A lawyer for opponents of the vaccine requirement, which has been blocked nationwide by a federal judge in Texas, said the requirement imposes an “unconstitutionally intolerable choice” for executive branch workers — taking a vaccine they don’t want or losing their jobs.
Judges on the appeals court meanwhile questioned how far the chief executive’s authority goes, asking, theoretically, whether the president could require employees to meet certain healthy body weights or forbid them from smoking at home.
It was the second time arguments on the issue were heard before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel of the same court had upheld the Biden requirement for executive branch workers, overturning the Texas judge.
But the full appeals court, currently with 16 active members, vacated the panel ruling and agreed to rehear the case. There was no indication when the court would rule.
Administration lawyers argue that the employees opposing the mandate should have taken their objections not to federal court but to a federal review board, in accordance with the Civil Service Reform Act. The administration also argues that the president has the same authority, under the Constitution, as the CEO of a private corporation to require that employees be vaccinated.
Arguing for the government, Charles Scarborough of the Department of Justice, said the statute provides employees with “robust” remedies if they successfully challenge the requirement through the review board, including back pay if they are dismissed for not complying.
Addressing whether the president could impose body weight requirements on federal employees, Scarborough said the vaccine requirement is part of a mainstream effort to reduce the incidence of serious COVID-19 cases in the workplace, while a body weight requirement would be among “hypotheticals at the extremes.”
Opponents say the policy is an encroachment on federal workers’ lives that neither the Constitution nor federal statutes authorize. And they argued that a case involving a policy that could cost some workers their jobs if they don’t agree to a medical procedure is not the type of work policy that belongs before a civil service review board.
Biden issued an executive order Sept. 9 ordering vaccinations for all executive branch agency employees, with exceptions for medical and religious reasons. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of Texas by then-President Donald Trump, issued a nationwide injunction against the requirement in January.
There came a series of varying rulings at the 5th Circuit.
One three-judge panel refused to immediately block the law.
But, a 2-1 ruling on the merits of the case by a different panel upheld Biden’s position. Judges Carl Stewart and James Dennis, both nominated to the court by President Bill Clinton, were in the majority. Judge Rhesa Barksdale, a senior judge nominated by President George H.W. Bush, dissented, saying the relief the challengers sought does not fall under the Civil Service Reform Act cited by the administration.
A majority of the full court voted to vacate that ruling and reconsider the case, resulting in Tuesday’s hearing.
Twelve of 16 active judges at the 5th Circuit were nominated to the court by Republicans, including six Trump appointees. Senior judges do not routinely take part in full-court hearings but Barksdale participated in the hearing Tuesday because he had been on the earlier panel.
An Orlando clinic is challenging a $193,000 fine after allegations it violated a law that requires a 24-hour waiting period for performing abortions.
The Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), which oversees regulation of abortion clinics, issued an administrative complaint against the Center of Orlando for Women.
According to the complaint, the clinic didn’t comply with the law, which was passed in 2015, but has been challenged in the courts. It was upheld by a Leon County judge on April 25.
The law requires people seeking an abortion to wait at least 24 hours to get the procedure after an initial visit to a clinic.
The AHCA said from April 26 to May 11, the Center of Orlando for Women performed 193 abortions on the same day of initial visits and is charging $1,000 per violation.
Attorney Julie Gallagher, who represents the clinic, said the fine would likely bankrupt the business.
Gallagher issued the following statement to News 6:
In a court response, Gallagher said the fine should be much less and requested a formal hearing. She’s now awaiting a response from AHCA.
This comes nearly two weeks after a Miami clinic, Doctor’s Office for Women, Inc., which does business as Today’s Women Medical Center, challenged a potential $3,000 fine for allegedly violating the same law.
The European Medicines Agency has recommended the authorization of a tweaked booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine that includes protection against two of the latest versions of omicron, as countries look to bolster their immunization programs ahead of winter.
The EU regulator said Monday that laboratory studies suggest the combination vaccine — which targets both the original COVID-19 virus as well as the omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 — should trigger an effective immune response. The vaccine is expected to be as safe as the original version, but the agency will continue to track its rollout globally since the data is limited.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the modified vaccine shot the green light last month.
According to the World Health Organization, the BA.5 version of omicron is responsible for most of the COVID-19 spreading globally; it made up about 87% of all virus sequences shared with the biggest public database.
Earlier this month, the European Medicines Agency also cleared two combination vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Inc. which aimed at protecting against the earlier omicron subvariant BA.1.
It’s unclear how well the updated boosters will work since experts are still gathering data. But there’s evidence that they are safe, so waiting for more study on their effectiveness would risk another mutation appearing before people are immunized.
Scientists warn that the coronavirus will linger far into the future, partly because it is getting better and better at getting around immunity from vaccination and past infection.
Globally, coronavirus cases and deaths have been dropping for weeks, but experts expect a surge of hospitalizations and deaths with the coming winter in the northern hemisphere. So far the virus has killed over 6.5 million people worldwide.
Total Doses Distributed = 817,498,295. Total Doses Administered = 610,686,563. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 263,103,582. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 224,367,691.
The number of new coronavirus cases fell everywhere in the world last week by about 12%, according to the World Health Organization’s latest weekly review of the pandemic issued Wednesday.
The U.N. health agency reported that there were just under 4.2 million new infections last week and about 13,700 deaths – a 5% drop.
“This is very encouraging, but there is no guarantee these trends will persist,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press briefing. “The most dangerous thing is to assume (that) they will,” he said. He added that even though the number of weekly reported deaths have plummeted more than 80% since February, one person still dies with COVID-19 every 44 seconds and that most of those deaths are avoidable.
In its pandemic report, WHO said COVID-19 deaths dropped in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East, but increased in Africa, the Americas and the Western Pacific.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, noted that the virus has not yet settled into a seasonal pattern and that its continued evolution will require constant surveillance and possible tweaks to diagnostics, treatments and vaccines.
Scientists warn the coronavirus will linger far into the future, partly because it is getting better and better at getting around immunity from vaccination and past infection. Experts point to emerging research that suggests the latest omicron variant gaining ground in the U.S. — BA.4.6, which was responsible for around 8% of new U.S. infections last week — appears to be even better at evading the immune system than the dominant BA.5.
In China, authorities this week locked down 65 million of its citizens under tough COVID-19 restrictions and is discouraging domestic travel during upcoming national holidays.
Across the country, 33 cities including seven provincial capitals are under full or partial lockdown covering more than 65 million people, according to a tally published late Sunday by the Chinese business magazine Caixin.
It said that outbreaks have been reported in 103 cities, the highest since the early days of the pandemic in early 2020.
