Visitors to the Shanghai Disney resort were stranded for the second time in 12 months after authorities and operators announced a sudden lockdown as part of China’s tough response to the pandemic.
Echoing scenes from across Covid-zero China, viral videos emerged on Monday showing guests rushing to the theme park’s closed gates in an attempt to escape the lockdown. This happened after unusual scenes at the weekend, with a mass flight of employees from the closed Foxconn factory to Zhengzhou to walk hundreds of kilometers to their hometowns.
The Disney Resort, which includes Disneyland and shopping areas, announced shortly after 11:30 a.m. that it was closing the theme park and surrounding areas immediately in line with Covid regulations. The Shanghai government said on WeChat that all people are barred from entering and exiting the park, and those still inside must be screened and show a negative result before being allowed to leave the park.
Anyone who has visited the park since Oct. 27 will have to be tested for the virus three times within three days, the statement said.
Videos shared on social media showed people soon crowding the park’s gates. One clip showed a staff member telling trapped guests that the park’s shops and attractions were still open and he would update them if there were any updates as a colleague closed the gates behind him.
The park was also closed for two days last November with more than 30,000 visitors stuck inside after authorities ordered them all to be screened.
China’s drive to contain and control every outbreak has led to extremely destructive lockdowns of various facilities, from individual buildings to entire districts. Movement across cities and provinces has been restricted, hundreds of millions are under lockdown and hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to be sent to a regional quarantine center because they are contagious, a close contact or a relatively distant neighbor.
On Saturday, Shanghai reported only 10 local cases. China reported 479 confirmed cases and more than 2,200 asymptomatic cases in the country on Monday.
The two high-profile lockdowns were the latest signs of growing discontent among some Chinese over increasingly disruptive restrictions that are suddenly being imposed across the country, sometimes over multiple cases. Social media posts in recent months have shown scores of shoppers and office workers fleeing the buildings, sometimes with large security forces to get away before they are locked down.
Apple supplier Foxconn has not disclosed the number of infected workers or the number of those who have left, but said on Sunday it would not stop them from leaving after hundreds of workers appeared to begin fleeing the world’s largest iPhone factory on Saturday. some climbing over fences to escape. The Taiwan-headquartered manufacturer has about 200,000 people at its Zhengzhou complex, which includes dormitories for workers.
The mass departures came amid reports of fear over the outbreak and complaints of poor living conditions and inadequate Covid responses, two weeks after the “closed-loop” system began. Local officials on Monday rejected claims that conditions had become unlivable and that the company had arranged transport for those who wanted to return home.
The official also said that the situation is now under control and production is continuing, but an insider told Reuters that there are fears that iPhone production at the factory could drop by 30% next month.
The exodus forced nearby cities to develop isolation plans return of migrant workers to native places. In a show of support, residents on nearby routes left bottled water and provisions next to roads with signs such as: “for Foxconn workers returning home,” according to social media reports.
“Some people were walking among the wheat fields with their luggage, blankets and blankets,” a WeChat user wrote in a post about the images on social media. “I couldn’t help but feel sad.”
Many residents had hoped that the zero-Covid policy might be relaxed after last week congress of the communist party, the most important meeting of China’s five-year political cycle. But instead the country’s leader Xi Jinpingreiterated his commitment to the pandemic response for the indefinite future.
The policy has damaged China’s economy and social fabric, but health experts and Chinese officials have said the spread of the virus among its 1.4 billion residents would be catastrophic, with potentially hundreds of millions of deaths.
China has few previous infections, large numbers of elderly people remain unvaccinated, and the health care system is geographically inequitable and will not be able to cope, they said.
A further study of Xiaoqian Zhu
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