04.15.2022 09:15 (Akt. 04.15.2022 09:15)
Dissatisfaction with the difficult course is growing
The Chinese economic metropolis of Shanghai has been under strict lockdown for its 26 million residents since late March.
Many are becoming dissatisfied with the difficult course. Numerous quarantine centers have been set up around the city to prevent the spread of the omicron variant. However, the number of new corona infections continues to rise to record levels.
Video footage provided to Reuters by a woman at one such facility on Thursday shows more than 100 people crammed into what appears to be a one-story office building. There, people who have tested positive for Covid-19 are in rows of gray cribs, with suitcases and other belongings spread out beside them.
“How can this be okay?”
“This center is so crowded that everyone is less than a meter apart,” said the woman, in her 60s, who filmed the video and asked not to be identified. She says there are at least 200 people at the facility, including young children, who share four bathrooms. There are no showers and they only get plain bread for breakfast. “How can this be good?” she asks. People spend time playing games on their phones or chatting, as the video shows.
As part of China’s zero Covid policy, anyone testing positive must be quarantined at designated locations. President Xi Jinping urges China to follow this strict course. “The current global pandemic is still very serious, we must not relax the work of prevention and control. Persistence brings victory,” Xi said during a visit to the southern island of Hainan, state media reported on Thursday.
Quarantine centers with 50,000 people
For Shanghai, this policy means that schools, newly completed apartment buildings and exhibition halls have been turned into quarantine centers, the largest of which can accommodate 50,000 people.
Authorities announced last week that they had created more than 60 such quarantine centers. However, conditions vary widely, and some have drawn strong criticism from the public.
When asked about conditions, the Shanghai government referred to Reuters transcripts of an April 8 press conference in which a city official said the isolation facilities were being built in accordance with government guidelines. You don’t know anything about the installation shown in the video and check this. Authorities have not yet given details on the number of people in quarantine, but the city has recorded more than 280,000 Covid infections since March.
inhumane conditions
While state media shows hospitals with only two or three patients per room, people hospitalized in Shanghai’s centers live side by side with thousands of others, without walls or showers and overhead lights 24 hours a day.
Two consecutive negative PCR tests are required to be released from quarantine.
The woman who made the video available said she arrived at the quarantine center after staying about 20 days in a hotel complex with better conditions. She had previously tested negative, but now fears she could be infected again. “There are people here who are positive, who have a cough and fever – how do you put the positive and the negative together?”