Shanghai:
Acts of officials, workers storming factory gates and households furious at being dragged into quarantine – Shanghai’s long battle against Covid-19 is degenerating into chaos and despair.
China is pushing to stick to its zero-covid strategy, and that has resulted in most of Shanghai’s 25 million residents being locked up for several weeks.
The city is the epicenter of China’s worst Covid outbreak to date, with more than half a million infections and more than 500 deaths, according to official figures.
But despite the fact that the number of cases has fallen to the small thousands in recent days, authorities are still devising new control measures.
Those include moving entire housing complexes into quarantine — even those with negative virus tests — and refusing some food deliveries in an effort to stop the virus from spreading.
Residents who were initially told they would only be home for a few days are now entering their sixth or seventh week of lockdown and anger is boiling across the city.
Footage emerged this weekend of a street fight between locals and officials wearing white hazmat suits in Shanghai’s Minhang district.
District officials later said “troublemakers” clashed with health management personnel Saturday night, urging neighbors to vacate their barricaded building as other residents threw objects out of their windows onto the street.
Videos circulating on social media and verified by AFP show people in Minhang’s Zhuanqiao neighborhood urging police as chants against “violent law enforcement” circulated.
Workers at Apple supplier Quanta’s factory in Shanghai fought with guards and broke through barricades last week over fears that Covid rules on campus could become stricter, Bloomberg said.
The flashpoints add to a catalog of protests since the lockdown started in early April, in a country where unrest is normally quickly suppressed and rarely seen by the general public.
‘Stop asking why’
Shanghai officials claim the city is winning its Covid battle and stated in recent weeks that millions have been released from the strictest levels of lockdown.
But the view from the ground is different. Major neighborhoods that have been given a brief semblance of freedom have been quietly locked up again, residents of Shanghai told AFP.
Many who have been placed in low-risk areas have been told they cannot leave their apartments except to get Covid tests.
Compounds order “quiet periods” or curfews of up to seven days when people are prohibited from even ordering deliveries of personal items, according to official reports seen by AFP.
Meanwhile, residents of multiple buildings have told AFP they have been warned against forced relocation to quarantined facilities if their neighbors test positive.
“We will all be taken to a quarantine center and we will have to hand over our keys so they can come in and spray everything with disinfectant,” said a British citizen who lives in Shanghai’s Xuhui district. revenge.
Videos showing brawls with officials are now common on Chinese social media, with new clashes being shared at a rate exceeding the censors’ race to wipe them out.
A video that went viral this weekend showed officials fit for hazardous materials arguing with a family in a mix of Mandarin and Shanghainese dialect.
“You can’t do what you want unless you go to America. This is China,” an official says in the video after telling the family they should be quarantined because they are contacts on the same floor of a Covid -matter.
“Stop asking why. There is no why. This is in accordance with national regulations.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)