Wu Jinglei is in the hospital with “severe migraines.” Last week a colleague of his from Hongkou district died suddenly – possibly committed suicide: and many health workers complain about unbearable pressure from Beijing.
The head of the health commission also ended up in a hospital in Shanghai. Wu Jinglei does not have Covid-19 but is being treated for a severe form of migraine, local government sources told the South China Morning Post.
dr Wu is 60 years old, a pediatrician and has been leading the fight against the wave of infections caused by the outbreak of the Omicron variant in Shanghai since the beginning of March.
His hospitalization signals the stress faced by officials at the megalopolis shut down in China’s strictest, longest and harshest lockdown between January and April 2020 following the Wuhan disaster.
According to information from Shanghai, Director Wu is a respected official who has struggled to reconcile political orders requiring an insistence on zero tolerance and the need to support a population of 26 million, of which about 400,000 remain Were sent home isolation in spartan organized camps.
Xi Jinping sent Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chunlan, his proconsul for managing the pandemic, to the city. His mission is to “carry out the important instructions of the party secretary-general to study the epidemic prevention and control system,” the Xinhua news agency wrote.
Translated, this means blocking the chain of infection at all costs and taking control of operations from the city government, which has been accused of acting too late.
By mid-March, Shanghai authorities ruled out the hypothesis of a general lockdown. The pressure on health authorities in Shanghai and politicians in Beijing has increased. Some local party officials were fired.
Last week, Qian Wenxiong, a senior official at the Hongkou District Health Commission, died suddenly at the age of 55. Rumors circulated online that Qian took his own life out of fear of punishment or due to the accumulated stress. Shanghai police have neither commented nor denied this.
Recordings of phone conversations have been circulating on Weibo, China’s main social network, as Shanghai health workers vented fatigue and frustration at the weight of the Zero Covid operation, which they believe will be an impossible one after the arrival of the Omicron variant mission.
April 21, 2022 (change April 21, 2022 | 17:16)
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