This article examines the necropolitics in the governance of the Covid-19 health crisis and the exposure of poor members of the population to the risk of contamination in DR Congo in 2020. By enacting a state of emergency and restricting the freedom of action and movement of citizens whose daily survival depends on it, the measures taken to prevent the pandemic spread had the opposite effect of exposing hundreds of thousands of them to new risks. Moreover, the day-to-day management of the pandemic was at times flawed and chaotic, contributing to widespread denial of the risk associated with the pandemic. The authors argue that resistance by citizens to containment measures prohibiting their daily survival activities has fostered the emergence of “competing” risks and created new vulnerabilities, aggravating pre-existing “familiar” risks. This dramatic paradox is interpreted here as the consequence of an authoritarian necropolitical governance.