Covid Case in Our Office Building, So We All Went Home Early

A pandemic worker pulls a cart down the hallway of a quarantine hotel. Image source.

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak 

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Here's another update about covid in Shanghai!

Basically our apartment complex is still requiring us to get tested every 2 days. And, as I've said before, it's "mandatory" but nobody is actually enforcing it. If you go to some public place, there will be an employee or security guard checking to make sure everyone has a negative nucleic acid test from the past 72 hours, but if you don't go out anywhere, then nobody is enforcing this "mandatory" testing.

Another fun (?) thing is that the area where I work is requiring covid testing on certain days- for example, they're doing "mandatory" testing on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and that means that when we enter the office on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we are required to show a negative result from within 24 hours. So yeah, for me there are various overlapping requirements about who needs to see what result, and it basically worked out to me getting tested every single day this week. 

I noticed this week that the testers who came to our complex weren't wearing the whole baymax outfit (ie, the white PPE that covers your entire body). They were wearing some less-intense PPE that still included N95 mask, face shield, hairnet, gloves, thin blue robe, and plastic covering their legs and feet. (So, their neck is exposed to the air, and the part that covers their clothes is much thinner and more breathable than the baymax outfit.) This must be because it's so hot.

Some pictures of what I'm talking about:

The less intense blue PPE outfit. Image source.

The white "baymax" 大白 PPE outfit. Image source.

You can see how the baymax one would be unbearable in 90-degree weather. 

Also, this week our apartment management notified us all that it's VERY IMPORTANT that we scan the location code for our apartment complex every time we enter. Previously I thought it wasn't really that big a deal, I scanned it a few weeks ago, whatever. But apparently they are asking us to take it more seriously now and scan it every single time.

(As I've explained before, scanning the "location code" 场所码 will register your information so there is a record of who was where, to be used for contact tracing. And on June 3 I said "I give it 1 month before everyone decides it's not worth the trouble and quits doing it.")

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Colleagues went to quarantine hotel

A few weeks ago, a waiter at a restaurant near my job tested positive for covid. That meant that all customers at the restaurant for the previous 7 days were designated as "close contacts" 密接 and had to stay in quarantine hotels for 10 days.

6 of my colleagues had been to that restaurant, and thus had to stay at quarantine hotels. I talked to one of them, Ray, about it. He said he had been to the restaurant on Wednesday, and the waiter tested positive on Saturday, so it doesn't make sense- how could something that would happen 3 days in the future affect him? 

The logic is that the waiter might have already been positive during the previous 7 days, even if they hadn't tested positive yet. I am pretty sure waiters and people in those kinds of jobs who are constantly interacting with customers are getting tested every single day, though. And people like Ray, who are going out to public places, have to show a negative nucleic acid test result from within 72 hours. My point is, Ray must have already tested negative multiple times, just as part of the testing we are all required to do in our daily lives, before he even got the call informing him that he was a close contact.

Ray got the call the next Wednesday, actually. A full week after he had been to that restaurant. He tells me, it doesn't make sense, it was a whole week later, that they called him and then took him to the quarantine hotel.

Ray lives in Pudong (this is one of the districts in Shanghai) so he was assigned to a quarantine hotel in Pudong. Other colleagues live in other districts, so they were at quarantine hotels in those districts.

The quarantine hotels are for close contacts of covid-positive patients, and everyone has an individual room, so they can't interact with anyone or infect anyone. The hotel stay is free, and the food is free (3 meals a day) but Ray told me the food was not very good. And they're not allowed to get other food delivered from local restaurants. 

(Quarantine hotels are a different thing from the hospitals where they send covid patients. On my blog I have used the term "quarantine centers" to refer to the makeshift hospitals that were hastily thrown together to house covid patients. The quarantine hotels I'm talking about now are a totally different thing.)

Ray had to stay in the quarantine hotel for 10 days. But wait a minute, didn't they just change the policy recently, so it would be 7 days in the hotel + 3 days of home quarantine? Yes, they announced this change (previously for international arrivals it was 14 days in the hotel + 7 at home, and possibly the same policy for close contacts of local covid cases?) but I'm hearing anecdotes from lots of people who say that actually, what's happening in reality is 10 days in the hotel, NOT 7 days in the hotel + 3 days at home. I heard this from people who entered China from abroad, as well as my colleagues who had to stay in the quarantine hotel due to being "close contacts." In Ray's case, he said his apartment complex told him that if he came back after 7 days, to do 3 days of home quarantine, his family would also be stuck in home quarantine for those 3 days, so it's better for him to stay in the hotel instead. Seems like to some extent, the interpretation of "7+3" is decided by your apartment complex management.

Ray said the internet connection in the hotel wasn't very good- probably because lots of people are using it at the same time. He said when he had meetings on Microsoft Teams, he tried to share his screen and it just made the connection slower and slower until he gave up. And he didn't have a table in his room (just a very narrow stand in front of the TV) so he just had to sit on the bed and work.

But hey, good news, at least no one at my job has covid!

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Covid case in our office building

On Thursday, I was at work, and our IT guy posted in the group chat to say that there was a possible covid case on the 16th floor of the office building. (A test tube with a bunch of swabs in it had tested positive, and one of the swabs was from someone on the 16th floor. Typically for mass testing they do 10 people's swabs per tube, so there was a 1 in 10 chance that this person on the 16th floor was covid-positive. At least, that's what we were told, though the HR manager suspected that they had been confirmed positive and we just hadn't been told the whole situation.)

So, in the message from the IT guy, it said the 16th floor is under lockdown for 48 hours, so don't go to the 16th floor! (Our office is on a higher floor.)

A group of us were sitting at our computers working, and the HR manager came and told us we should take our computers home, and work from home the next day. One of my colleagues was asking her if our office's AC system is connected to the rest of the building- that would be scary! She said no, our AC is a separate system.

People were talking about "is it safe to take the elevator? maybe we should take the stairs" and "oh so scary!"

There was a birthday party planned that afternoon for all the July birthdays in our office, and the HR manager was like "okay let's eat the cake and then we all go home!" Very concerned that if we stayed in the office too long, we might get locked down and be stuck there for days.

Oh, and also: Nobody put on a mask. We're all working there, with no masks, talking about "oh no, so scary, a covid case in our building" and nobody put on a mask in response to it! This seems very illogical! I also did not put on a mask, so I guess I am also illogical.

Instead, we all gathered in one room to eat birthday cake and fruit. (Chinese people love fruit.) Blowing out candles all over the cake and everything.

The more I think about that, the more I'm like, wow Chinese people are not prepared for how to realistically respond to covid risk if the zero-covid policy ends. Right now, the government makes a ton of rules for us, and we just kind of begrudgingly follow them. (And by "begrudgingly follow them," I mean, apparently, we make a run for it so we don't get stuck in quarantine.) The main thing we were concerned about on Thursday was getting locked in our office building for several days- rather than being concerned about the possibility of actually getting covid. If some security guard had come in and told us all to put masks on, we would have done it- but it wasn't something people thought of on their own.

So we're standing around, eating fruit and cake, and our HR manager keeps telling us "hurry up and eat and go home!" And the person who had bought the cake and all the fruit was like "okay each person take 1 container of fruit."

And the HR manager was telling us "if you all get locked in here, it's going to be my problem, go go go!"

So we all packed up our computers and everything, in a bit of a panic, put our masks on, and someone said "the apartment complex next to us has been locked down!" Oh no, hurry hurry hurry, let's get out of here!

Some of us weren't sure if it was okay to take the elevator or not, so we took the stairs. I was in the group that took the stairs, all the way down to the first floor. Some people took the freight elevator, and later I found out a whole group of my colleagues had taken the regular elevator anyway, carrying their extra trays of fruit.

We got down to the first floor and everything seemed normal. There seemed to be a normal amount of people going in/ going out/ standing around. No pandemic workers in hazmat suits or anything. Okay...?

Anyway, I was worried about "is this going to be designated as a medium-risk area? is my health code going to turn yellow?" I was concerned about not being allowed to enter the subway station if my health code suddenly turned yellow, so I took a taxi to go home.

But no, my health code didn't turn yellow- it's still green. And we realized that maybe we were a bit too panicked and the situation wasn't actually that urgent. On Friday, we were all working from home, but apparently everything was normal at the office. Only the 16th floor is locked down; everywhere else was normal.

The HR manager told us we should all get tested every day for the next few days, just to be sure.

I still don't know for sure if the 16th-floor person was confirmed to be covid-positive or not. I don't even know if it's true that "the apartment complex next to us has been locked down"- people were saying that as we were all rushing out in a panic, but I haven't been able to fact-check it.

Anyway, seems like we'll be back in the office like normal on Monday.

Edit: Oh also, remember in my July 9 post, there was apparently a positive covid case in our office building, so then the whole building was locked down for 7 days and we all worked from home? Weirdly, this time is different- only the 16th floor is being locked down, and everything else is open like normal. Either the rules have changed, or there are some details they haven't told us that make this time different from that time (for example, how much time did the covid-positive person spend in the building?). 

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Links:

Sixth Tone

Ice Manufacturers Revel in Shanghai’s Summer Heat, but for How Much Longer? (July 25)

‘Hot, Hot, Hot’: China Hit with Blistering Heat Wave (July 15)

"A viral photo taken on July 10 shows a volunteer in Shanghai holding a block of ice to cool himself. From Weibo" (image from the article linked above)

SHINE

San Francisco-Shanghai flight suspended over COVID-19 (July 28) "United Airlines' Flight UA857 from San Francisco to Shanghai, which has been suspended multiple times, will be put on hold from August 8 after five passengers on a flight tested positive for COVID-19 on July 18, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said on Thursday."

Baoshan, the new focus of Shanghai's COVID-19 resurgence (July 26) Right now Baoshan District is the area of Shanghai with the most covid cases. Baoshan is pretty far from the city center; the article calls it a "suburban district."

New pop-up window on Shanghai health code to contain COVID-19 spread (July 25) This affects people entering Shanghai from "medium risk" or "high risk" places.

China's COVID-19 vaccines safe, effective (July 24) It's good to see articles like this correcting misinformation and encouraging everyone to get vaccinated.

PCR test history reduced in Suishenban app (July 21) "From Thursday, users can now only look up their test results dating back to July 6, instead of as previously the past three months." This is good- the article says that this will help prevent discrimination against people who had covid in the past. There are a lot of anecdotes of companies who refuse to hire someone because they had covid, months ago- and even though it's illegal, it still happens. But with that history no longer visible on the Suishenban app (health code app), that will help.

Mandatory PCR tests for Shanghai residents extended until August 31 (July 20) This is about the mandatory weekly testing. In reality, though, we're getting tested way more often than that, basically every 2 days. "Citizens are now subject to at least one nucleic acid test every week. Otherwise their health code will turn yellow, preventing them from taking public transport or entering any public areas." (This isn't a change, it's just saying that the current policy will continue.)

That's Mags

Travel Code History Reduced from 14 to 7 Days (July 8) I guess this is old news because it's from July 8, but I didn't hear about it until last week. The "travel code" 行程码 app is now showing the cities you've visited in the past 7 days, instead of 14 days. This is very cool! It will make it easier to travel in China. (In my July 2 post I wrote about another big change in the travel code app- no more star!)

CNN

China's Wuhan shuts down district of 1 million people over 4 asymptomatic Covid cases (July 27) I bet the people of Wuhan are very tired of this.