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| Covid-testing in Shanghai. Image source. |
Posts about the covid outbreak in Shanghai, China:
Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak
On the Current Covid Outbreak in Shanghai (March 12)
I'm in Lockdown (March 16)
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Yay another update.
So here's a basic timeline about how this covid outbreak in Shanghai (which began around March 1) is affecting us:
Thursday, March 10: I start working from home
Friday, March 11: Shanghai announces that all schools will be closed starting March 12, and this includes my son's daycare
Monday, March 14: My husband and I work from home, while our son is also at home, running around, making a mess, and constantly asking for things.
Wednesday, March 16: In the morning, we discover that our apartment complex has been put in a 48-hour lockdown. (Not because of any known covid cases in here, but because this whole area is a "key region" and they are doing mass testing.) We all get covid-tested.
Thursday, March 17: We get the results from Wednesday's covid test- the 3 of us are all negative. As far as I know, everyone in our apartment complex tested negative on Wednesday. Anyway, we are all required to get tested again on Thursday, because that's how the 48-hour lockdown works- they want to test everyone twice during the 48 hours.
Friday, March 18: In the morning, I go to the main gate of the complex to see if it's open, because our lockdown is supposed to be over. The nice volunteers there tell me that they haven't received any notification yet, and so they can't end the lockdown yet.
Friday afternoon, someone comes knocking on all the doors to get everyone in the building into a WeChat group (WeChat is the social media app that everyone has in China) so that they can give us updates. They also said that our lockdown will continue and that we are all required to get tested again on Saturday and again on Sunday.
Also, our apartment management people have organized a vegetable delivery for us- they are offering bags with a whole bunch of fresh vegetables for 30 kuai (about 5 USD). That's nice. ^_^
Saturday, March 19 (today): In the morning, there's a post in the WeChat group to tell us it's time to get covid-tested. They are grouping people together by what building you live in, for the testing. So the 3 of us go and stand in line and do the covid test. (The testing station has been set up at the main gate of our complex.)
Saturday afternoon, our vegetables arrive. It's a lot of vegetables.
I keep checking on the "Health Cloud" app to see if our covid test results from Thursday are there. Finally, Saturday afternoon, the results are there. Negative. (Not that it makes any difference- we are still being mass-tested. And don't worry, obviously when they do mass testing, it's free. If you aren't required to get tested but you want to do it anyway, then you pay- I think it's about 40 kuai. But if it's required, then it's free.)
(I mean, lol, it makes a difference in the sense that, if you test positive, then you get taken to the hospital or quarantine hotel, obviously. But I don't really expect anyone in our apartment complex is covid-positive.)
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About groceries:
Oof, this is a problem. Normally I order groceries using the Hema app (Chinese name is 盒马, sometimes I see it called "Fresh Hippo" in English). But Hema has been unavailable since ... Thursday? I can put stuff in my cart but I can't actually place an order- I don't know if that's because it's closed or because everyone else already booked all the delivery times. I do know that it was closed for part of the day on Wednesday, because their customer service called me and said the employees were all getting covid-tested (probably caught up in the same lockdowns that we are)- but then, hours later, they did deliver my order. (Hooray!)
So, can't get anything on Hema right now. I have been checking it every few hours to see if it lets me place an order. Meanwhile, I am trying a bunch of other grocery apps- Meituan Maicai (美团买菜), Jingdong (京东), Tianmao Market (天猫超市), grocery stores like Carrefour and Lianhua that use the Meituan delivery platform... all of them are closed, or don't have any delivery times available, or don't deliver to this address (probably because there are suddenly restrictions on how far you can go to deliver food, during a covid outbreak), or the delivery fee is very high. I did end up placing an order on one of them- it will come 3-4 days from now...
We are fine- we do have a lot of food in our home already. But this must be a huge problem for people who are less organized than me, for old people who don't know how to use apps very well, and for international people who can't read Chinese/ prefer to eat more "western" kinds of food and therefore have less flexibility about what grocery stores they can buy from.
In the group chat, they've been asking for volunteers- I bet the volunteers will be tasked with helping old people get their grocery deliveries, and things like that.
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About lockdowns going badly:
Well, remember my friend Casey that I talked about last week? As I wrote last week, they are a teacher, and their school was locked down and all the students and staff had to spend the night there. The next day, they were all allowed to go home, but need to do a "7+7", which means 7 days of quarantine + 7 days of health observation (not sure how exactly to translate it to English). The "health observation" part means you can go out to run your errands or whatever, but not to socialize with friends. (Doesn't really seem to be enforced, though- like, who would know?)
Apparently it's been a mess of unclear communication at Casey's school. HR hasn't really given them clear guidelines on what they're supposed to do. (Or even what "7+7" means.) They're all supposed to go home and notify their apartment management, who will be in charge of their quarantines.
Apparently each apartment complex is coming up with their own interpretation of what "7+7" means. Casey was told that they can just stay in their room and their bathroom, and their roommates can use the other bathroom in the apartment, so the roommates don't have to quarantine or anything. And Casey followed those rules and stayed in their room, but if they hadn't, who would have known? It's not like anyone from the apartment management was there to check if Casey's door stayed closed and they didn't interact with their roommates. And when Casey was required to go get covid-tested during the 7 days of quarantine, the apartment management told Casey what covid-testing location to go to- as in, they had to leave their apartment and go out into society and find this location to get tested, and the apartment management people are fine with that.
On the other hand, some of the other teachers from Casey's school ended up with sensors on their doors- you know, with rules about "you can only open the door 3 times per day" and all that. Or they were told they had to stay in their home and weren't allowed to leave, and somebody was supposed to come and covid-test them, but nobody came. Or they went home and quarantined for several days before they found out that their apartment management hadn't even been notified about the quarantine, and therefore those days didn't "count", and the "7+7" starts when the management is notified.
I was discussing this in a WeChat group with Casey and some other friends- and yeah, some of my friends know people in much worse lockdown situations. Like someone stuck in a lockdown, 5 people in one studio apartment (4 men and 1 woman)- I assume it's because they don't all live there but they were visiting and then the lockdown suddenly happened and they weren't allowed to leave. Somebody even heard of somebody in Shanghai (okay, we have no way of verifying this story), where the security guards put a padlock and chains on this person's apartment door. On hearing this, one of my friends said "That's illegal! He needs to report that to the police!" and yeah, she's right. The Shanghai government very much does not want people being locked in with literal chains- but local security guards are the ones who actually have to take the guidelines from the government and implement them in reality, and some of these security guards are doing things like that.
Yeah... With huge lockdowns like this, you inevitably have stuff like that happening. It's not okay. (And the government in Xi'an was very much criticized for the way they handled the lockdowns a few months ago. Rightly criticized.) I see things that my apartment complex is doing well- like having lots of these red-vested volunteers around to tell us what's going on, coming door-to-door to check who is living in each apartment, making sure everyone is informed about when the covid tests are, setting up vegetable deliveries, etc. And at the same time, it's easy to see a lot of ways that a lockdown can go really badly, when you give random security guards that much power over people's lives. A lot of potential for mismanagement and abuse.
I realize that I am hesitant to say anything bad about China's handling of the pandemic, because I worry that the alternative is just doing what the US did and letting hundreds of thousands of people die. This is a fallacy- I shouldn't think that way. We can say that zero-covid is the right strategy, and also be realistic about the risks that come with it, and we should definitely criticize the people/governments who are doing a bad job. Definitely criticize them when their mismanagement means that people aren't able to get their basic needs met while in lockdown.
Western media reports these things like "here are some examples of China doing a bad job of making sure people's basic needs get met while in lockdown, THEREFORE zero-covid is bad, everyone hates it, China's lockdowns are so HARSH, so STRICT, China is being ridiculous and needs to stop this 'zero-covid' stuff, come on, all the other countries in the world have decided it's FINE to just let everyone have covid, when is China gonna get with the program and stop their oddball 'zero-covid' silliness?"
Anywayyyyyy. For me, things are fine here in Shanghai in lockdown. The impression I get is that overall, Shanghai is doing a good job, but does NOT have the outbreak under control yet. Every day they report how many covid cases have been discovered, and those numbers aren't going down yet. I expect this outbreak to last until maybe early- or mid-April. (Lol maybe I shouldn't make predictions; I could be completely wrong.)
I will post more updates as they happen ^_^
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A few news articles:
China reports first COVID-19 deaths in more than a year (March 19) This is from AP, and I'm surprised to see that it doesn't have that anti-China bias I'm used to seeing in western media articles about covid. (Good job!) Also, wow I had no idea that China has reported 0 deaths from covid since January 2021. (I am asking myself if I even can believe that... Yeah I know it must be a super-low number, but could it really be literally 0?) Anyway, this is a good article.
How Omicron Is Challenging China’s Grip on COVID-19 (March 18) From Sixth Tone, a Chinese news source. It's about recent changes in China's strategy, and hope that it means China will be able to relax a bit and be with the rest of the world again. That's encouraging, but also I am skeptical... there have been MANY MANY articles in the last 2 years about "so-and-so, an expert in infectious disease/ the Chinese tourism industry/ whatever, says that China is totally going to open the border in the next 6 months." (I mean, technically the border isn't closed; people enter China every day, it's just really hard.) And yet I am still stuck here and can't see my family.
How Four Chinese Cities Are Responding as Case Counts Rise (March 17) Also from Sixth Tone. Very informative graphs! (But the graph for Shenzhen is sideways, uh, what on earth?)
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Follow-up post: I'm in Lockdown Again
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