China city mayor apologizes over COVID-19 lockdown response

BEIJING (AP) — The mayor of a northeastern Chinese city on the North Korean border has apologized for unspecified failures related to its COVID-19 response. Dandong has been under lockdown for more than 50 days. The mayor gave no specifics, but said government work and basic services had been “unsatisfactory,” for which he offered his apologies. It is highly unusual for a ranking Communist Party official to publicly concede errors, particularly regarding China’s “zero-COVID” policy that has been repeatedly endorsed by top officials. Unable to root out the source of new cases, Dandong officials took increasingly extreme measures. Despite reporting only a handful of cases, Dandong has seen one of the strictest lockdowns in China.