It is the largest covid operation in China since the lockdown of Wuhan, for which 4,000 soldiers and 42,000 medics were brought in from outside. The military and medics will assist the Shanghai authorities with building temporary hospitals and quarantine centers, conducting mass tests and curbing the chaos that has accompanied the lockdown in Shanghai. The reinforcements were announced during an inspection visit by Vice Prime Minister Sun Chunlan, President Xi’s ‘corona troubleshooter’. It is a clear signal that the Chinese government remains fully committed to the zero-covid policy.
The national government’s intervention comes after many days of mounting criticism of the Shanghai authorities. The metropolitan city started a so-called ‘phased lockdown’ on March 25, in which the two city halves were closed alternately. That half (now complete) lockdown did not result in a reduction in the number of infections, and at the same time was so chaotic that discontent among the population was increasing.
Many Shanghai residents complain that despite negative tests, they are not allowed to leave their apartment and are not given food for days. Online delivery services and volunteers are overloaded, many residents survive on instant noodles. Videos of people calling for food from their homes can be seen on social media. Other videos show how truck drivers throw away vegetables and meat, which have become inedible due to the long delays due to covid restrictions.
Central quarantine
Even more dire is the situation of residents who test positive: they must be in central quarantine, even if they have no or mild symptoms. Because the existing quarantine centers are fully occupied, empty exhibition halls, gyms and schools have been converted in haste. Seven thousand and 15 thousand camp beds, respectively, have been placed together in two exhibition halls, with low partitions. “This is asking for cross-infections,” a man exclaims on a video of those halls. “The leaders have to come here and explain.”
According to many witnesses, the conditions in the quarantine centers are disastrous: toilets are not working, there are no showers and sometimes no sinks, there are no medicines, and there is so much noise that it is impossible to sleep. A woman locked up in an abandoned school in Pudong shows in a video how patients jostle for blankets, food or water. “It’s a mess,” she says. “We have to fight for our facilities. I could cry.’ A man tells how his elderly mother had to wait for hours in the cold because there was no room. “She was asymptomatic at first, but now she has symptoms, possibly from the cold.”
What worries many residents is that children who test positive are separated from their parents (if the parents also test positive, an exception is sometimes made). A mother, whose six-year-old son had to be quarantined alone, posted videos of his surroundings online, obtained from staff. The video shows a hospital lobby full of beds, in which sometimes three babies lie together, unsupervised. Western diplomats wrote a letter to oppose the separation of children, which can also happen to expats.
Precision Measures
Amid all the criticism, there is also amazement that a modern and wealthy city like Shanghai does not know how to organize the lockdown better. But the city seems to have been surprised by the omikron variant. Shanghai has long had a slightly more liberal covid policy than the rest of China, and prided itself on being able to contain the virus with precision measures. The rapid increase in the number of infections, combined with the obligation to place all cases in central quarantine, quickly drained all available resources.
A leaked recording of a telephone conversation also shows that not everyone within the local authorities is still behind the zero-covid policy. “I’ve told them dozens of times that it’s better to isolate mild and asymptomatic cases at home, but nobody listens,” Dr. Zhu Weiping, who works for the Center for Disease Control, grumbles in the conversation. She gives permission to place the recording online. “This disease has become a political disease. So much human, material and financial effort… all to fight some kind of flu.’
Some Shanghai residents conclude that the economic and social damage of the zero-covid policy has become so great that China can learn to live with the virus better, like the rest of the world. But the extended lockdown and outside aid troops show that the government in Beijing is learning a different lesson. Due to the low vaccination coverage of the elderly, the government thinks it is too early to let go of the covid restrictions. The lesson from Shanghai, according to the national government: even faster and stricter intervention.