RISE OF THE BOTS
Chilling vids show creepy ROBOT dogs parading the streets of Shanghai to enforce world’s strictest Covid lockdown
FOOTAGE has emerged of creepy robot dogs parading the streets of Shanghai as China continues to enforce the world’s strictest lockdown.
The four-legged droids have been tasked with spreading public health information amid the country’s extreme “zero covid policy”.
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In a chilling video, the machine repeats a series of simple messages via a megaphone taped to its head.
It repeats: “Wear a mask, wash your hands, check your temperature.”
The scenes in China are reminiscent of an episode of the Netflix dystopian drama Black Mirror, in which robot dogs are attacking people after the mysterious collapse of human society.
It comes as scary drones have also been deployed by the state to catch citizens violating the rules.
It pronounces: “Your behaviour has violated anti-pandemic rules.
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“Please go home immediately, or you will be punished in accordance with the law.”
The Chinese city, home to 26 million, returned to lockdown this week as the country reported its highest daily number of Covid cases since the start of the pandemic.
And with fears that the Omicron variant will continue to spread, Shanghai’s government has introduced a new two stage lockdown “to curb the spread of the epidemic”.
The city’s eastern district Pudong, which includes the city's main airport and financial district, has been locked down since Monday morning and will be freed on April 1.
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That same day, the city's western half Puxi will lockdown for four days.
The government announced that public transport would be suspended, adding that unapproved vehicles would not be allowed on the roads.
"The public is asked to support, understand and cooperate with the city's epidemic prevention and control work, and participate in nucleic acid testing in an orderly manner," a spokesperson said.
It comes as health officials in the city have watched on nervously as the Hong Kong Omicron variant sparked more than 56,000 cases in March.
While the number of cases may seem low, it is higher than what it should be according to the country's "zero Covid" strategy.
Roger Garside, a former Chinese diplomat, believes the policy has brough heat on President Xi Jinping's as his overblown strategy has "locked the country into isolation" from the rest of the world.
The expert said that by refusing to import vaccines and enforcing severe lockdowns, the sprawling 1.4billion population had "failed to gain herd immunity".
He told the Sun Online: "It is conceivable that their Covid-19 strategy will implode upon them or cause a political crisis.
"China has a grave problem in its zero-Covid strategy because the rest of the world is moving towards living with Covid - thanks to a combination of effective vaccines and herd immunity.
“We are moving towards treating Covid as endemic. And China cannot do that at the moment because they have not developed herd immunity: their vaccines are shown to be much less effective than our mRNA ones and their severe lockdowns have prevented people from gaining immunity through infection.
"They have refused to import vaccines produced abroad because under Xi Jinping they wish to demonstrate to the world their model of governance is superior to ours."
China's brutal strategy has seen extreme restrictions imposed on towns and cities with just a handful of infections.
Entire buildings, including Shanghai’s famous tower, have even been sealed off as those who test positive are shipped off to horror quarantine camps.
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It comes as China, back in January, banned millions of people from going outside as it was battling one of its worst outbreaks since the beginning of the pandemic.
The 13 million people living in the northern city of Xian were banned from leaving their homes - even for essential reasons like buying food and anyone caught driving risked being jailed.
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