Video shows announcement from 2022, not return of Covid-era restrictions in Guangzhou in 2023
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on December 13, 2023 at 10:07
- 4 min read
- By Jeff LI, AFP Hong Kong
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"Horror story has come true! Commute by showing green health code, go to work, school or take public transport by showing nucleic test results in Guangzhou!" reads part of the simplified Chinese caption of a video shared here on X, formerly Twitter, on December 4, 2023.
It suggests China will return to hardline Covid-19 restrictions that were in place for three years during the pandemic and long after the rest of the world had largely learnt to live with the virus.
The video shows an official -- identified as Zhang Yi, deputy director of the Guangzhou Health Commission -- making an announcement.
She says: "From today, those seeking outpatient and emergency treatment at all city and district-level medical facilities must present a green health code for access.
"Patients and their carers must present negative testing results before they can be admitted into hospitals."
Text repeating Zhang's remarks is overlaid on the video, and dated "December 2, Guangzhou, Guangdong province".
China's "health codes" -- with their colour-coded system of red, yellow and green signifying different levels of risk -- defined pandemic-era life in the country as it stuck with a policy of zero-tolerance for Covid-19.
Health-tracking apps were required for entry almost everywhere, including offices, transport stations, stores, malls and taxis.
China started rolling back its tough rules in early December 2022, after the restrictions sparked popular unrest and hammered the world's second-largest economy.
The same clip was shared with similar false claims the restrictions were being reimposed elsewhere on X here, here and here, and on YouTube here.
It circulated as China recorded a spike in "influenza-like illness" since mid-October, which the country's National Health Commission said was due to the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions and the circulation of known pathogens, namely influenza and common bacterial infections that affect children, including mycoplasma pneumonia.
The World Health Organization said on November 23 that Chinese authorities had reported "that there has been no detection of any unusual or novel pathogens or unusual clinical presentations, including in Beijing and Liaoning."
In response to the surge, the Chinese education ministry called on schools to step up measures to curb the spread of illness, while the National Health Commission said the public should wear masks and medical facilities across China should stock up on vaccines (archived links here and here).
However, a review of the Guangzhou Health Commission's website found no announcement on December 2 that restrictions similar to those imposed for Covid-19 are being reintroduced as a response to the surge in respiratory illness cases.
Local paper the Guangzhou Daily -- which has consistently reported about Covid-19 curbs in Guangzhou -- have also not published any such notice as of December 13.
Moreover, the video that circulated in the false posts in fact shows a press conference held a year earlier.
Covid press conference
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the video led to a similar clip uploaded by state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) on December 3, 2022 (archived link).
The clip is a report about a press conference held by the Guangzhou Health Commission a day earlier, where Zhang announced new measures to control the spread of Covid-19 in the city.
The clip is titled: "Guangzhou: the public must present green health code when seeking outpatient or emergency treatment at medical facilities across the city."
The video in the false post matches the portion of the CCTV clip starting from its 1:06 mark.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the CCTV video (right):
The Guangzhou Health Commission repeated the announcement on its website here (archived link).
The state-run Guangzhou Daily also reported on the press conference on its Sina Weibo page, as seen in the screenshot below:
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