China quietly marks 5th anniversary of first coronavirus death toll

The fifth anniversary of the first confirmed death from COVID-19 passed without much attention in China on Saturday, but it marked an official memorial in a country where the pandemic is taboo. There were no events.

January 11, 2020, health officials The city of Wuhan in central China announced that a 61-year-old man had died from complications of pneumonia caused by an unknown virus.

The announcement came after authorities reported dozens of infections over several weeks with the pathogen later named SARS-CoV-2 and responsible for the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

It then sparked a global pandemic that has killed more than 7 million people and drastically changed lifestyles around the world, including in China.

But on Saturday, no official memorial appeared to be listed in Beijing's tightly controlled official media.

The ruling Communist Party has continued to strictly control public debate through its zero-coronavirus policy, and has avoided reflecting on its hard-line regulations since largely abolishing them at the end of 2022.

Even on social media, many users seemed unaware of this anniversary.

Some videos circulating on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, are dated but repeat official events.

“Time passes”

Users on the popular Weibo platform, also drawn to the former account of Li Wenliang, a whistleblower doctor who was investigated by police for disseminating early information about the virus, did not directly mention the anniversary.

“Dr. Lee, another year has passed,” one comment read Saturday. “How quickly time passes.”

Even in Hong Kong, where the Chinese government largely silenced opposition when it imposed sweeping national security laws on the semi-autonomous city in 2020, few online commemorations were held.

Unlike other countries, China has not erected large memorials to those who lost their lives in the pandemic.

Little is known about the identity of the first coronavirus victim, other than that he frequented the Wuhan seafood market where the virus is believed to have spread during the initial outbreak.

The first cases of the disease were reported in other countries within days of his death, indicating that public efforts to stop the spread of the disease had failed.

China has since been criticized by Western governments for covering up the initial outbreak of the virus and concealing evidence of its origins, but Beijing insists it acted decisively and with full transparency.

China has officially reported about 100 million coronavirus infections and 122,000 deaths, according to the WHO, but the true numbers are likely never known.

In 2023, the Chinese government declared “decisive victory” over the new coronavirus and called its response a “miracle in human history.”

© 2025 AFP

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