Shanghai epidemic: more than 20,000 new infections in a single day, cumulative infections exceeded 130,000
As of April 8, the cumulative number of local infections (confirmed cases and asymptomatic infections) of the new round of COVID-19 in Shanghai has exceeded 130,000, and there is still an upward trend.
It is the 25 million residents of Shanghai who are staying at home who are paying the price for the zero-clearing policy and strict lockdown measures. The supply of living materials is unstable, the unblocking is still in the future, and the online world is full of anger… These all take place in Shanghai in 2022: China’s financial center, a model student who has been widely praised for “accurate anti-epidemic”.
Seal and control
Since being banned on February 27, Xi Xi (pseudonym), a post-80s resident of Shanghai Pudong New Area, has completed eight nucleic acid tests in the past two weeks. There are about 20 residential buildings in her community, and almost all of them have positive confirmed cases.
image source,Getty Images
The materials that Chinese provinces donate to Shanghai mainly rely on community volunteers to help deliver vegetables to households.
image source,Getty Images
Some communities in Shanghai have been locked down for a month.
“There are (currently) more than 200 positive cases and asymptomatic infections in the community. Every night, I can see Bass pulling away confirmed patients at the gate of the community, about a dozen or 20 at a time. It has not been done yet,” Xi Xi said tiredly.
At the end of March, Shanghai decided to take the Huangpu River as the boundary to control the old and new urban areas in turn. It is planned to be lifted on April 1 and April 6 respectively. However, as of April 8, the epidemic prevention requirements of staying at home are still being implemented. During this period, two rounds of visible city-wide nucleic acid testing have been conducted.
According to Shanghai’s community epidemic prevention standards, if there are positive confirmed cases in the building, it means that the residents of the entire building are classified as close contacts, and they can only go downstairs to collect supplies and cannot go to the community for activities. Nucleic acid screening will be carried out in the community until there are no positive cases in the community.
The government seems to have taken tough measures to send some citizens to “fangcang shelter hospitals” for isolation. One Weibo user wrote that he was forcibly sent to a makeshift hospital when he was treated with little preparation.
image source,Weibo
Although it has always adopted a cautious attitude towards the closure of the city, emphasizing precise prevention and control, in this round of epidemic, Shanghai has returned to the physical closure model when the Wuhan epidemic broke out in 2020.
Xi Xi said: “The current unwritten rule in Pudong is that as long as there are positive cases in the community, the community will be closed endlessly. Now each community does not stop doing nucleic acid tests, and positive cases are taken to the shelter. Hospitals or isolation hotels are quarantined, and residents of the community will do nucleic acid tests until there are no positive cases, and the time to unblock will not be calculated.”
Another Shanghai citizen, Mr. Lu, posted help on WeChat Moments, asking everyone to come up with ideas to help grandma who needs to be taken care of. “Hopefully there is a place to rescue my elderly grandmother.”
image source,Wechat
Chronically ill people have become wounded under the pandemic’s strict quarantine measures.
Xi Xi said that his community has been closed for 2 weeks, and some communities have been closed for a month. The neighborhood committee has no one to answer the phone.
In another community in Shanghai, a neighborhood secretary posted a post on social media on April 7 to resign because he “felt powerless with the current situation.”
The battle for mild isolation
A screenshot of a proposal for home quarantine for mild and asymptomatic infected people was circulated in Shanghai’s WeChat Moments. The letter promised: “If any neighbor unfortunately tests positive, as long as they are asymptomatic or mild As a neighbor, I will support you to choose to isolate at home after signing the letter of commitment. I will never despise you, and I am willing to work with community volunteers to help you solve your normal life needs.”
The letter also called for “looking forward to the optimization and upgrading of national-level epidemic prevention strategies, and no longer limited to solving problems in 2022 with the ideas of 2020.”
This screenshot was not signed, and was deleted by the WeChat platform after it was circulated.
Xi Xi said that some communities in Shanghai have indeed tried, but they have all failed: “The policy is that positive cases must be taken away, and you can’t resist.”
She said: “Shanghai citizens all know that (the current epidemic prevention policy) is unreasonable. In particular, the vast majority of mild and asymptomatic infections are taken to isolation. This policy has no scientific basis and meaning.”
grab food
The lack of living materials under strict lockdown has been complained by Shanghai residents.
Xixi said that the most painful thing is to grab vegetables. When she first entered the lockdown, she could also buy meat, vegetables, and eggs through commonly used software such as Dingdong grocery shopping and Meituan.
Support materials from all over China have arrived in Shanghai one after another. But the problem also followed, and the capacity was scarce.
image source,Wechat
Starting from April 6, Dingdong Maicai announced that it will not deliver orders in the area where Xixi lives. “There’s also no explanation for why. That’s very bad news for me. It’s the main source of livelihood.”
After the Internet grocery shopping platform was cut off, Xixi could only turn to the WeChat grocery shopping group. During the period of being blocked, whoever has a channel for living materials will set up a WeChat group. When the bosses see the order and reach the quantity he is willing to deliver, it will be delivered to the gate of the community in the form of a group purchase.
“I have joined countless grocery shopping groups and group buying groups. The first thing I do when I wake up every day is the solitaire. It’s a very mechanized movement… I have never spent so long on researching food since I was a child. It’s absurd.”
image source,Wechat
Xi Xi had to be busy grabbing food in the WeChat group every day.
Xi Xi does not like to cook, nor is he good at cooking. The epidemic made her have to spend a lot of time on food, and this forced choice made her feel helpless.
Xi Xi said (via) that some unreliable group-buying vegetables in the WeChat group have a particularly high chance of miscarriage. “Buy and buy the boss and disappear. Either the boss is tested positive or quarantined, and the group disappears.”
The basic materials for living are gradually decreasing, Xi Xi said: “My solution is to save and eat every day.”
“Is Shanghai high enough in 2022? Life can still be like this. It’s uncomfortable.” She sighed.
Faced with the reality that materials cannot reach the community, some Shanghai residents began to barter to save themselves. A Shanghai citizen shared his experience on WeChat and said: “The most convenient way now is the most primitive barter.”
Liu Min, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, said at a press conference on April 6 that there are indeed some difficulties in ensuring the supply of living materials. For example, the cross-provincial logistics is not smooth enough due to the impact of the epidemic, and the terminal capacity is insufficient, resulting in delayed delivery.
In the live broadcast room of the Shanghai Epidemic Press Conference on April 7, a netizen left a message in the live broadcast room, asking the leaders who participated in the press conference: “Put down the manuscript! Leaders please demonstrate on the spot to buy vegetables on mobile phones!!!”
more pain points
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About 38,000 medical staff from across China have arrived in Shanghai for support.
Xi Xi shared with BBC reporters some videos circulating on Twitter that showed some residents of the Shanghai community rushing out of the gate of the community to protest in the streets. Another video shows residents shouting over loudspeakers: “We want to eat, we want to go to work, we want to be free.”
The BBC was unable to independently verify what happened in the video.
Residents who are still locked up at home have expressed anger on the Internet at the culling of a corgi pet dog by the Shanghai epidemic prevention staff. Cat and dog owners share counseling and strategies with each other to prevent pets from being culled.
The anger also comes from Shanghai’s April 4 stipulation that if the parent of the child is also a positive infected person, they can live in the children’s area to accompany and care for them and receive observation and treatment together. As soon as the official statement came out, public opinion criticized the cold-blooded policy makers, and many mothers of infants and young children began to ask on search engines how to quickly get infected with the new crown virus? Faced with unquenchable anger, Shanghai said on April 6 that guardians of children with “special needs” could voluntarily apply to accompany them.
The banned netizens speak out on the Chinese internet every day, hoping that the public and the media will see the real Shanghai, but the official platform does not open or delete comments. On the other side of the parallel space and time, what the public can see through the official platform is that 38,000 medical staff are supporting Shanghai, and aid materials have been delivered to all provinces across the country. On the We Media, residents called for supplies, and articles criticizing the epidemic prevention policy were deleted.
Xi Xi said that the people of Shanghai are now isolated in their own homes, and there is no guarantee. “This hopeless situation is the most hopeless.”
Accidents caused by the strict “clearing” policy continued to occur in China’s largest city where she lives. The known deaths from Shanghai’s official media and self-media include: a nurse who had an asthma attack and was refused treatment by her own hospital due to the prevention and control of the epidemic, resulting in the death of a nurse who missed the best time for treatment; 120 ambulances refused to lend a defibrillator to another A patient who was in a critical condition and died after delaying the time for treatment; in the Tsinghua University alumni group, everyone misses an alumni who died after being quarantined by a nursing staff and no one helped to clear the phlegm…