UNSETTLING footage appears to show young children in Shanghai dressed in hazmat suits amid China’s zero Covid policy.
The dystopian clip shows a group of youngsters covered from head to toe heading to school during the world’s strictest lockdown.
The kids, who seem to be of primary school age, are also wearing face masks, leaving only their eyes visible.
The worrying scenes come as earlier this month heartbreaking images showed toddlers screaming their heads off after they were forcibly removed from their parents and kept in cages.
Shanghai’s 26 million residents have been plunged into an extremely strict lockdown for more than five weeks with Chinese authorities justifying it as a way to get the city’s Covid cases under control.
China’s most populated city reported a record number of positive cases on Saturday and other areas across China tightened controls as the country kept up its zero Covid approach.
READ MORE IN CHINA
Shanghai is struggling to contain the outbreak with more than 20,000 Covid cases a day being reported over at least 10 days.
Most of the city’s residents are trapped in their homes, with chilling footage showing ordinary citizens screaming spontaneously from desperation, after being forbidden to leave their homes for over a week.
Under China’s draconian Covid rules, anyone found positive – even if asymptomatic or with a mild infection – must be isolated from non-infected people.
Earlier this week a sickening clip showed police in Shanghai stuffing dozens of live cats in bags to be slaughtered.
Horrific footage also showed police in hazmat suits dragging a man out of his apartment in Shanghai.
In a video filmed from a nearby building, the man backs onto his balcony to get away, before he appears to be brought down by some sort of stun gun.
The cruel approach to handling Covid has rocked the city to its core, sparking mass panic, anxiety and outrage amongst horrified residents.
In a shocking video that went viral on Chinese social media, starving shoppers raided a Shanghai supermarket.
It comes as earlier this week a pet corgi was filmed being beaten to death by a health care worker after its owner tested positive for Covid.
Meanwhile, drones are flying over buildings telling residents to “control your soul’s desire for freedom,” reports the South China Morning Post.
Read More on Trending In The News
On Wednesday, President Xi Jinping said “prevention and control work cannot be relaxed” indicating that the city had a long road ahead before the lift of the measures.
Diplomats from more than 30 countries have written to the Chinese foreign ministry demanding an immediate end to the brutal policy.
