The Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone, home to Apple’s largest iPhone manufacturing facility owned by contractor Foxconn, has declared an immediate lockdown until November 9 to stem the spread of a Covid-19 outbreak. All residents of the area will be barred from exiting, while only authorized vehicles will be allowed to circulate, according to a notice from local authorities. The notice may not specify the application of the measures to Foxconn, whose plant has been operating in recent weeks amid worker discontent over the anti-Covid squeeze.
Chinese authorities have imposed the blockade on over 600,000 people around the world’s largest iPhone factory who have been affected in recent days by a mass exodus of workers fearful of the prospect of undergoing new and grueling quarantines. All but Covid prevention volunteers and essential workers “are not allowed to leave their homes except to receive Covid tests and emergency medical care,” officials at Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone in central China said in a lengthy note published in the official WeChat was released account. Some employees took to social media, among other things, to vent about the precarious living conditions and decided to leave the plant on foot after breaking the containment barriers. Foxconn has said in the past that the campus in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, could employ up to 300,000 workers.
China is the latest major economy to continue pursuing a “zero Covid” strategy, which relies on sudden lockdowns, mass testing and lengthy quarantines to contain outbreaks of contagion. Foxconn also announced last week that it has started daily nucleic acid testing for employees held in a “closed-circuit bubble” and offering stay-at-work incentives: just yesterday the company announced a four-fold bonus for employees , which will help at a stage of production high demand for iPhones ahead of the year-end holidays. China today reported more than 2,000 new home infections for the third straight day in updates from Tuesday. Henan province has officially reported 359 Covid-19 infections, up from 104 on Monday. The Guangzhou South China Manufacturing Center also announced partial lockdowns in several districts this week in response to the rising number of cases.
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