The fifth anniversary of the first known death linked to the Covid-19 virus went unnoticed in China on Saturday, without official commemoration in a country where the pandemic remains a taboo subject. On January 11, 2020, health authorities in the city of Wuhan, in central China, announced that a 61-year-old man had died from complications of pneumonia caused by a previously unknown virus.
The revelation came after authorities reported dozens of infections over the course of several weeks with the pathogen later called SARS-CoV-2 and believed to be the cause of Covid-19 disease. Little information has been given on the identity of the first Covid victim, other than that she assiduously frequented a seafood market in Wuhan where the virus is believed to have circulated during the initial outbreak.
It then unleashed a global pandemic that, to date, has killed more than seven million people and profoundly changed lifestyles around the world, including in China. On Saturday, Beijing’s tightly controlled state media did not make an official commemoration. The ruling Communist Party has locked down public debate and avoided any consideration of draconian restrictions since radically abandoning them at the end of 2022.
Online, rare references
On social networks, many users seemed to ignore this anniversary. Some videos circulating on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) mention the date but repeat the official version of events. On the popular platform Weibo, users who gravitate towards the former account of Li Wenliang, the whistleblowing doctor who was the subject of a police investigation for spreading early information about the virus, have not directly referring to the birthday. “Dr Li, another year has passed,” one comment read on Saturday. “Time flies so quickly.”
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Online commemorations have also been few in Hong Kong, where Beijing largely stifled opposition voices when it imposed a sweeping national security law on the semi-autonomous city in 2020. Unlike some other countries, China has not erected large monuments in memory of those who lost their lives during the pandemic. According to the WHO, China has officially reported nearly 100 million Covid cases and 122,000 deaths to date, although the true number will likely never be known.
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