After Leona Cheng tested positive for the coronavirus late last month, she was told to pack her bags for a hospital stay. When the ambulance came to her apartment in central Shanghai to pick her up two days later, no one said otherwise.
So Ms. Cheng was surprised when the car pulled up not to a hospital but to a sprawling convention center. Inside, empty halls had been divided into living areas with thousands of makeshift beds. And on exhibition stall partitions, purple signs bore numbers demarcating quarantine zones.
Ms. Cheng, who stayed at the center for 13 days, was among the first of hundreds of thousands of Shanghai residents to be sent to government quarantine and isolation facilities, as the city deals with a surge in coronavirus cases for the first time in the pandemic. The facilities are a key part of China’s playbook of tracking, tracing and eliminating the virus, one that has been met with unusual public resistance in recent weeks.
Footage circulating on Chinese social media on Thursday showed members of one Shanghai community protesting the use of apartment buildings in their complex for isolating people who test positive for the virus. Police officers in white hazmat suits could be seen physically beating back angry residents, some of whom pleaded with them to stop. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Ding Ting/Xinhua via AP |
Jane Polubotko didn’t see darkness for almost three weeks.
After testing positive for Covid-19, she was forced to live under 24/7 lighting in a Shanghai exhibition center along with thousands of strangers and the din of their chatter and mobile phones.
The 30-year-old Ukraine national was released from the makeshift government quarantine facility Friday, after three negative tests in the past week. The experience, she said, made her feel like a "Covid criminal."
Arriving back at her apartment she shares with her boyfriend, Ms. Polubotko said she first let worried friends know she was home. Next on the list: a long, hot shower after 18 days without one at the center. She was relishing the silence and privacy of her home—and being in control of her own bedroom light.
"Hearing nothing but silence and being able to adjust my own lighting," Ms. Polubotko said. "I won’t take these things for granted again."
Ms. Polubotko’s ordeal began the same day Shanghai commenced a two-stage citywide lockdown, which involved mass testing, to rein in its runaway Covid-19 outbreak. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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