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Heavy rains have complicated recovery efforts from the earthquake in southwest China, where the death toll has risen to 82.
More than 20,000 people were moved to makeshift shelters amid the threat of landslides and collapsed buildings in mountainous Sichuan province, state media reported on Thursday.
Rain is expected to continue until at least Friday.
On Monday, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Region in Sichuan and the neighboring city of Ya’an, causing buildings to collapse and boulders to collapse, leaving 35 people missing and 270 taken to hospitals, reports said.
Buildings in the provincial capital Chengdu were also shaken, with 21 million of the 65 million Chinese confined to their homes and residential areas under a strict Covid-19 lockdown.
After the earthquake, police and health workers in Chengdu refused to let anxious residents out, fueling public dissatisfaction with the government’s strict zero-coronavirus policy to enforce lockdowns, quarantines and other restrictions, even as the rest of the world has largely reopened.
Despite the impact on the economy and public sentiment, the policy has been closely aligned with President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, the so-called politicization of health care.
The government also discouraged domestic travel during the Mid-Autumn Festival on Saturday and the week-long national holiday in early October.
103 cities reported virus outbreaks, the highest level since the early days of the pandemic in early 2020.
Monday’s quake was concentrated in the mountains of Luding County, on the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, about 125 miles from Chengdu.
Friction between tectonic plates in the region often triggers earthquakes, including China’s deadliest in recent years, a 2008 magnitude 7.9 quake that killed nearly 90,000 people in Sichuan.
That earthquake devastated towns, schools and rural communities outside Chengdu, leading to years of rebuilding with more resilient materials.
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