Authorities in south China apologize over COVID-19 break-ins

BEIJING (AP) — Authorities in southern China apologized for breaking into the homes of people quarantined for being suspected of contracting COVID-19 in the latest example of heavy-handed measures that have sparked a rare public backlash.

The Communist Party newspaper Global Times reported Tuesday that 84 homes of people sent for isolation in Guangzhou city’s Liwan district were opened in an effort to find close contacts remaining inside and to disinfect the premises.

The doors were later sealed and new locks installed, the paper reported.

The district government apologized for such “oversimplified and violent” behavior, the paper said. An investigation team has been set up to investigate and “relevant people" will be severely punished, it said.

China's leadership has maintained its hard-line “zero-COVID” policy despite the mounting economic costs and disruption to the lives of ordinary citizens, who continue to be subjected to routine testing and quarantines, even while the rest of the world has opened up to living with the disease.

Numerous cases of police and health workers breaking into homes around China in the name of anti-COVID-19 measures have been documented on social media. In some, doors have been broken down and residents threatened with punishment, even when they tested negative for the virus. Authorities have demanded keys to lock in residents of apartment buildings where cases have been detected, steel barriers erected to prevent them leaving their compounds and iron bars welded over doors.

China's Communist leaders exert stringent control over the government, police and levers of social control. Most citizens are inured to a lack of privacy and restrictions on free speech and the right to assembly.

However, the strict anti-COVID-19 measures have...