The fifth anniversary of the first known death linked to the Covid-19 virus passed unnoticed in China on Saturday, with no official commemoration in a country where the pandemic remains a taboo subject.
On January 11, 2020, health officials in the central Chinese city of Wuhan announced that a 61-year-old man had died from complications of pneumonia caused by a previously unknown virus.
The revelation came after officials reported dozens of infections over several weeks with the pathogen later dubbed SARS-CoV-2 and believed to cause Covid-19.
It then triggered a global pandemic that has so far killed more than seven million people and profoundly altered lifestyles around the world, including in China.
On Saturday, Beijing's tightly controlled state media did not hold an official commemoration.
The ruling Communist Party has shut down public debate and avoided any reflection on the draconian restrictions since it radically abandoned them at the end of 2022.
On social media, many users seemed unaware of the anniversary. A few videos circulating on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) mentioned the date but repeated the official version of events.
– “Time passes” –
On the popular Weibo platform, users who gravitate around the former account of Li Wenliang—the whistleblower doctor who was investigated by police for spreading early information about the virus—did not directly refer to the anniversary.
"Dr. Li, another year has passed," one comment read on Saturday. "Time flies."
Online commemorations were also 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 other countries, China has not erected large monuments to those who lost their lives during the pandemic.
Little information has been released about the identity of the first Covid victim, other than that she was a frequent visitor to a Wuhan seafood market where the virus is believed to have circulated during the initial outbreak.
In the days following his death, other countries reported their first cases of the disease, showing that official efforts to contain its spread had failed.
China was subsequently criticized by Western governments for allegedly covering up the virus's early transmission and erasing evidence of its origins, although Beijing vehemently maintained that it had acted decisively and transparently.
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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