asyncio.create_task must have a strong reference otherwise they can get garbage collected.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio-task.html#asyncio.create_task:

Important Save a reference to the result of this function, to avoid a task disappearing mid-execution. The event loop only keeps weak references to tasks. A task that isn’t referenced elsewhere may get garbage collected at any time, even before it’s done. For reliable “fire-and-forget” background tasks, gather them in a collection:

Note that the create_task result is not stored.