BEIJING — Authorities in southern China apologized for breaking into the homes of people quarantined for being suspected of contracting Covid-19 in the latest example of heavy-handed measures that have sparked a rare public backlash.
The Communist Party newspaper Global Times reported Tuesday that 84 homes of people sent for isolation in Guangzhou city’s Liwan district were opened in an effort to find close contacts remaining inside and to disinfect the premises.
The doors were later sealed and new locks installed, the paper reported.
The district government apologized for such “oversimplified and violent” behavior, the paper said. An investigation team has been set up to investigate and “relevant people” will be severely punished, it said.
China’s leadership has maintained its hard-line “zero-Covid” policy despite the mounting economic costs and disruption to the lives of ordinary citizens, who continue to be subjected to routine testing and quarantines, even while the rest of the world has opened up to living with the disease.
Numerous cases of police and health workers breaking into homes around China in the name of anti-Covid-19 measures have been documented on social media.
Authorities in Beijing have taken a gentler approach, concerned with prompting unrest in the capital ahead of a key party congress later this year at which president and party leader Xi Jinping is expected to receive a third five-year term amid radically slower economic growth and high unemployment among college graduates and migrant workers. / AP