COVID-Control-Frenzied Chinese Authorities

"Many of us are very anxious. I spoke to friends, and many of them can't sleep at night."

"This concerns our very survival."

Nicole Tsai, Marketing manager, Shanghai 

"When I returned to China [after living in the U.S. for several years], I thought Shanghai was a relatively free city."

"But when I read the news online about children needing to be separated from their parents for quarantine, I find it very hard to understand."

"I'm worried to test positive [for COVID], not so much about the virus itself but about all the trouble that it will bring."

Ngo (surname withheld), IT specialist, mother of 3-year-old

A medical worker in a protective suit walks past people queuing to take a nucleic acid test in a residential area. Photograph: David Stanway/Reuters

 

Ngo has reason to be fearful, and to want to avoid contracting COVID, living in Shanghai, a city of 25 million people, shut down for weeks in a concerted effort to 'control' the virus. Authorities in Shanghai have taken to separating families from their children if they've been confirmed with COVID. The plight of dog-loving dog owners is much the same.

 

When dog owners are sent into quarantine, testing positive for COVID, their dogs are 'culled'. Last week the city burst into outrage when a video of a corgi bludgeoned to death took place in the city street. Similar starkly unforgiving incidents take place all across China. This at a time when dog owners are unable to walk their dogs for weeks on end, the fear is should they contract COVID it would be a death knell for a beloved pet.

 

The Shanghai government, when it first instituted a citywide lockdown made it clear it would last for four days. No one was permitted to question that time-frame; anyone who spread rumours that this would be a longer lockdown was threatened with punishment. People went out to stock up for food to last them a week. That four days passed and so did a week and another week. It became clear the lockdown would remain, and people ran out of food. 

Apartment dwellers were shown on video screaming out their windows and from balconies in frustration and fear and hunger when a video went into circulation to emphasize the plight of the population. "I'm going to die because of the lockdown, not the infection", one resident of the city posted on China's version of Twitter, Weibo. While the government organized food deliveries through community volunteers, hundreds posted online of their days without food.

Videos appeared of the city residents fighting over bags of produce at food distribution areas set up in residential compounds. Nicole Tsai remarked on spending over four hours every day on delivery apps in the hope of finding a window where food might be available to order for delivery. Entering the third week of lockdown there was an announcement that government would ease restrictions in some areas.

Food scarcity in China   Photograph AFP

 

The new plan by Shanghai officials would be a grouping of residential units into three risk categories to enable "appropriate activity" in neighbourhoods with no positive cases through a two-week stretch. A Shanghai city official explained the city was to be divided into 7,624 areas to remain sealed off, and 2,460 would become subjected to "controls" following a week of no new infections. After two weeks without a positive case, 7,565 "prevention areas" would be opened.

In the "prevention areas" people would be permitted to move throughout their neighbourhoods, practising social distancing. Should new infections arise, the areas would be sealed again. "The zones have been divided into government officials' zone, rich people's zone and poor people's zone" clarified one Weibo user.

A record 25,173 cases were reported Monday bringing the total number to over 200,000 since March 1st. The current outbreak constitutes the largest COVID crisis to arise since the first emergence of the virus in the city of Wuhan where the virus originated, in December of 2019. The most curious statistics is that rise in case numbers aside, there have been no reported deaths, and one serious illness only has surfaced. 

VCG

 

 

The solution, however is more permanent in that if a pet owner tests positive their pet is in line for elimination. Last week the city viewed with outrage a video of a corgi bludgeoned to death on t he streets after the dog's owners had been sent into quarantine at a government-operated centre. Across China, this is the fate of pets whose owners are diagnosed with COVID.