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Locked-down residents of the Chinese city of Chengdu have reacted angrily after security guards refused to allow them to leave their buildings or compounds during an earthquake.
Key points:
- Videos posted online showed residents of locked-down buildings demanding to be allowed to leave
- Chengdu residents on social media openly questioned the government's priorities
- Chengdu's quarantine measures are the most severe since Shanghai was locked-down earlier this year
Authorities in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in China's south-west, have maintained strict COVID-19 lockdown measures on the city's 21 million population despite the major earthquake on Monday that killed at least 65 people in outlying areas.
Buildings in Chengdu and other parts of western China were shaken by the quake. No damage was reported in the city.
One video posted online shows angry residents gathered in a lobby confronting a government worker in full PPE and demanding to be allowed out.
Another shows a large group of people shouting behind a gate while a security guard on a megaphone says: "Let me ask you, has your building collapsed or not?"
One anonymous user on WeChat questioned the government's priorities.
"There is no other emergency situation except for COVID, is there?" they said.
The user said their family ran down from the 9th floor to find the emergency doors on their building "nailed shut".
"They said if there are situations like that the government will make arrangements."
"I just want to ask if it is a more than 7-magnitude earthquake, and I wait for them, are they coming to collect my corpse?" the user posted.
Rescuers ordered to keep testing
Authorities in Ganzi, at the quake's epicentre, said people affected by the earthquake and the rescuers needed to continue to test daily.
“Rescuers permitted to enter the area need to hold a valid negative COVID test result from the past 24 hours," said the announcement.
"Civilian rescue groups are not allowed to enter the area to participate in rescue work."
One social media user said it was "surreal".
"Even if an earthquake is more deadly than COVID, testing is still more important than rescue work?" asked another.
Discord over COVID-zero growing
Despite only recording a handful of cases, Chengdu's quarantine measures are the most severe since China's largest city of Shanghai was locked down over the summer, prompting rare protests in person and online.
A Weibo user living in a "high-risk" area of the city said in a post on the social media platform their family went downstairs after the earthquake began, but security guards at their building would not let them out.
"At that moment, I do not know whether to blame them or feel sorry for them, [as it is] out of their own hands, but I cannot praise such 'pandemic policy'," they said.
George Li, who owns a coffee shop in Chengdu, told the ABC he rushed downstairs when he felt his apartment shaking.
"It was actually very scary," said Mr Li, who lives in a "low-risk" neighbourhood where people are allowed outside for two hours each day.
"Imagine it was a bigger earthquake, like the Wenchuan one [in 2008] and everyone needs to stay at home. No-one knows what's going to happen.
"My cousin's compound had their building gate sealed. They couldn't even go downstairs. They went into lockdown earlier than us, it's already day 13.
"As long as there is one positive case in your apartment building. The building gate will be sealed. No-one is allowed to leave the compound."
Lawyer Zhou Weifa told local media that people "of course" should be able to go out to seek safety.
"From the legal point of view, the right to life of a person is greater than any other rights and interests of any nature," Mr Zhou said.
China reported 1,695 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, of which 380 were symptomatic and 1,315 were asymptomatic, the National Health Commission said.
Chengdu's local government, which extended lockdown curbs in most areas until Wednesday to complete another round of mass testing, reported 121 new local cases, up from 90 the day before.
Liu Chaojie, the director of La Trobe University's China Health Program, said there was no indication Beijing was going to change its "COVID-zero" policy any time soon.
"Until this goal is changed, neither the policy of lockdown nor the mass nucleic acid test will change," he said.
Mass nucleic acid tests are considered more accurate than the antigen tests used in Western countries, but take longer to process.
Professor Chaojie added that local authorities' implementation of Beijing's policies was sometimes harsher than the central government intended.
"Because the policy from above is not very precise, [it} leaves them a space to interpret, and the lower level officials are afraid of accidents," he said.
"This [mentality] is actually very difficult to correct."
ABC/AP