This article examines the governance of the Covid-19 health crisis in 2020 in DR Congo in relation to the exposure of poor populations to the risk of contamination and proposes to analyze its necropolitical aspects. By restricting the freedom of action and movement of citizens whose daily survival depends on it, the measures taken to prevent the pandemic risk during the state of emergency had the opposite effect of exposing hundreds of thousands of them to new risks. Moreover, the day-to-day governance of the pandemic was at times flawed and chaotic, contributing to widespread denial of the pandemic risk. 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 authoritarian necropolitical governance.