Maeve Higgins: Fear and anger as China struggles to control virus and growing dissent

Chinese police officers block off access to a site where protesters had gathered in Shanghai to protest against China’s strict zero-Covid policies, continuing a round of demonstrations that spread across the country since a deadly apartment fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi led to questions over such rigid anti-virus measures.

As the third anniversary of the first recorded death from Covid-19 in Wuhan approaches, the Chinese government is still struggling to control both the virus and their population of 1.4bn people.

On Wednesday, the country’s National Health Committee released a 10-point plan easing its stringent but increasingly ineffective zero Covid measures. This was in response to a stunning series of protests against the measures that began late last month. Anti-lockdown protests broke out in many forms; with university students scrawling graffiti on campus walls and singing protest songs and hundreds of people holding up blank signs of paper to represent censorship. Others gathered on city streets to mourn their fellow citizens who had lost their lives because of the drastic lockdown measures.