The government is going to round-up their opposition under the guise of quarantining people due to covid-19 and then the government is going to kill off a large percentage of the population through some means (this means is unsure yet but likely vaccine), then claim it was a "deadly variant" of the virus. The public will stupidly believe it was covid-19 killing people rather than the government.

In this way the government has free reign to kill whoever they want without public backlash.