The great reward that China offers its inhabitants for ratting out and incriminating people who have coronavirus

China has announced today the detection of 54 new positives for coronavirus, as well as 103 asymptomatic cases. The data joins the 225,172 people in the country, according to the Chinese authorities, since the start of the pandemic, although the total number of infected excludes the asymptomatic.

China, which applies a severe “zero tolerance” policy towards the new coronavirus, has suffered in the last three months a wave of outbreaks attributed to the omicron variant that has caused Record numbers of infections not seen since the first half of 2020, when the pandemic began.

The country’s health authorities boasted for months about their policy to avoid contagion, but now, after the new wave, it seems that it is stopping working, which has forced the creation of a new “system of punishments and rewards” to cut the chain of transmission and lower contagion. Among them, the denunciations.

The denunciations -at its peak during the years of excesses of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)- reach especially in terms of rural China such as Jingxiu County, in the northern province of Hebei, neighboring Beijing.

“Whoever gives clues to the Government of suspected infections and they are finally confirmed as positive cases, will receive a reward of 10,000 yuan,” reads one of the circulars from the local authorities. According to the text, “you have to look for all those close contacts, sub-contacts, who should be in isolation and is not, or who has entered the county without informing or without a valid health QR code.”

In this way, the letter focuses on “monitoring” security personnel, doormen of medical developments, pharmacists or officials, as well as being alert in case weddings and funerals are held without warning.

Nominating the neighbor who is suspected of having contracted covid-19 carries a reward of 10,000 yuan (just over 1,400 euros). On the other hand, those who report others in a “malicious” way will be investigated and punished.

For example, in April, a Shandong resident who reported positive at his company was accused of doing so “wrongly”. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with “hallucinations, depression and anxiety.”