[imagesource: Twitter/ @manyapan]

Millions of people across China have been placed under very strict lockdown since March as the government tries to manage the latest COVID-19 outbreak.

Shanghai has been at the centre of China’s wider outbreak, with around 25 million residents forbidden from leaving their homes.

This has caused absolute chaos, with many frustrated at the lack of access to basic goods like food, water, health products, and even medical care for non-COVID-19 emergencies.

The latest sign of dysfunction has popped up via a video doing the rounds on Weibo, China’s largest social media platform, showing a man being carried off to the morgue in a body bag.

Only he was still alive.

CNN reported that the elderly Shanghai nursing home resident was declared dead for some reason, and then prepared for the morgue, with several workers dressed head-to-toe in protective gear putting him in a yellow body bag and then into the hearse.

Just as the workers were about to take him away, they appeared to register that something was not right. Upon opening the bag to check, they visibly recoiled as the man was actually alive.

Watch the video shot by a bystander from a nearby building:

Funeral parlor workers returned a body bag to a retirement home in Shanghai after opening it and realizing the person inside was still alive.

Five officials have been sanctioned and the doctor’s license was revoked. pic.twitter.com/tucb6eJCkI

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 3, 2022

People added their comments of horror and disbelief on Weibo:

“The problems in Shanghai are fully exposed this time,” read one popular comment on Weibo.

“This counts as intentional homicide,” wrote another user.

Many others pointed out the man could have been buried or cremated had he not been discovered alive. “The government doesn’t care … what is going on in Shanghai?” one comment read.

CBS News reported that a former editor-in-chief of state news outlet Hu Xijing called the incident a “serious dereliction of duty that almost led to death”.

The Shanghai district government confirmed that the man is now in stable condition.

China has been doing the utmost to stick to the strict “zero-COVID” rule, which may in some way be a form of political posturing:

That’s a possible reflection of the desire to maintain an outward calm in the city that more than anything symbolizes the Communist Party’s unopposed rule over the vast country. The urge is especially critical in a year when President Xi Jinping is seeking a groundbreaking third five-year term as party leader despite concerns about the return of single-man rule.

Xi has closely identified himself and the party with “zero-COVID,” making it politically impossible to abandon the approach, even as many other countries relax their pandemic restrictions and experts question its usefulness, saying vaccines and new treatments for COVID-19 make it unnecessary.

The frustration of the locked-down citizens has been boiling over, with many screaming out of their windows and banging pots and pans to get the government’s attention.

On Tuesday, Shanghai reported another 5 669 cases, all but 274 of which are asymptomatic, along with an additional 20 deaths.

[sources:cnn&cbsnews]