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| A nucleic acid testing station in Sanya. Image source. |
Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak
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Hi readers, another update about covid in Shanghai. I feel like, this is all very normal and boring... it's like "oh there are slight changes to the rules in how often you have to get covid-tested and you have to go here and there and scan a QR code, and it's of interest to people who live in Shanghai because it has significant practical effects on our lives, but like, why would anyone else need to care?"
When we were in lockdown, that was different, because that was an actual disaster, and it needed to be exposed for the world to see what was going on. But now it's just like, this tedious normal-ness we've settled into... like we're okay, but there are so many little rules now, and the fear of being locked down again always sort of looms in the background.
So anyway, I'm blogging about it to give my readers an image of what "normal" life is like in Shanghai in these pandemic times.
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Mandatory testing once a week
In my July 30 post, I said our apartment complex has been doing mandatory nucleic acid testing every 2 days. It has now changed to once a week, hooray! This is because there haven't been any covid cases near here for a while, so the powers-that-be feel okay about reducing the frequency of the mass testing.
But, the rules are still in place that whenever you enter a public location (mall, subway station, office building, etc), you need to show a negative nucleic acid test from within the past 72 hours. So even though our apartment complex is only requiring us to get tested once a week, those of us who have office jobs have to do it at least every 72 hours anyway. It's nice, though, that now there's a little more flexibility- before, our apartment complex said we all HAD to get tested Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. (Even though they didn't do anything to enforce it.) But now I can kind of make my own schedule for it.
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Sanya
China's Hainan reports 2,814 confirmed COVID-19 cases in latest resurgence (August 12) 2814 symptomatic + 2340 asymptomatic cases in Hainan province since August 1.
Thousands of medics rush to Sanya to aid anti-epidemic fight (August 12)
'We want to go home': Stranded travelers frustrated with lockdown in popular resort (August 11)
First batch of COVID-trapped tourists leaves Hainan (August 9) I mean, "batch" is a weird word to use here- I know they must be trying to translate 批, but I would have translated it as "group."
China’s Getaway Beach Destination Becomes COVID-19 Hotspot (August 8)
Covid lockdown strands 80,000 tourists in 'China's Hawaii' (August 7)
Full refunds for Sanya beach resort bookings amid COVID-19 outbreak (August 6) "About 80,000 tourists, including some from Shanghai, are stranded in the coastal city after it launched a lockdown from 6am Saturday to contain the outbreak caused by the highly transmissible BA.5.1.3 Omicron sub-variant."
COVID outbreak strands tourists in Sanya city (August 6)
So, the city of Sanya (in Hainan province, southern China) is a huge tourist destination. Sunny beaches and all that. I wrote in my July 2 post, "A lot of people in Shanghai are talking about taking a vacation in Sanya- it's a city in southern China, right on the ocean, with really amazing beaches. Sanya recently announced that travelers from Shanghai are allowed to come, with no quarantine required. I see a lot of people on WeChat talking about planning trips to Sanya."
Well, uh, bad news about that. Now there's a bad covid outbreak there, and thousands of tourists are stuck there.
I saw an article (can't find it now) that said something like, "in the grocery stores in Sanya, you can tell who the tourists from Shanghai are, because they have instant noodles, potato chips, and coke in their carts." Yes, people from Shanghai know what groceries you're going to wish you had when you're stuck in lockdown.
I'm really too emotionally exhausted to follow all the news from Sanya, but I can imagine it's not good. I can imagine crowds of people at the airport trying to get a flight to get out. And worse things than that.
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In other news, here's a funny little story from work
So I'm at the office one morning, and one of my colleagues- let's call him Haibo- texts me to say "do we need a 24-hour covid test to enter the building today?" Because, even though in general you need a negative nucleic acid test from the past 72 hours, whenever the area around our office building is doing mandatory mass testing, the office building will require us to have a negative result from the past 24 hours in order to enter (as if we had also participated in the mass testing, even though we don't live in that area).
So Haibo said he didn't have time the night before to go get tested, so maybe he has to work from home that day? He was asking me because he didn't know if the security guard would let him into the building.
My feeling was, I think they did say we need a 24-hour result that day (and I had been getting tested every day myself, just in case someone suddenly changes the rules and wants to see a result from the past 24 hours), but honestly I think you can totally sneak in without it. First of all, the security guard probably isn't even looking closely enough to see when your most recent test was. You have to show them your phone with the health code app open, showing your green health code, and underneath it will display the name of the location if you scanned a location code (which we are required to do when we enter the building) and it will say "24 hours" or "48 hours" or "3 days", etc, to indicate the general range of time when your most recent nucleic acid test was. But honestly, I don't think any of the security guards are looking closely enough to read all that. At most, they can just get enough of a glance to see that your health code is green, rather than yellow or red, and beyond that, whatever. (Though some places are more strict about it- the subway stations, hospitals, airports- and they really will read all those pieces of information on your phone screen. But your average security guard at your average location is definitely not getting paid enough to care.)
And also, I think that even though our office building management says you need a 24-hour test, if you don't have that, then if you at least have a 72-hour test and do a rapid-antigen test right there in front of them, that's also fine.
But lol I didn't want to tell Haibo "it's probably fine, they're not really going to check" because what if he comes all the way here and they don't let him into the building? I wouldn't want to give him bad advice and have him waste his time like that.
So anyway I told him it's probably fine because he can just do a rapid-antigen test when he gets here, but I said he should check with our IT guy who is closely keeping track of the building's policies.
A little while later, Haibo shows up at the office, and tells me the security guard was talking to someone else and didn't even look at him when he came in. So, whateverrrrrr.
So... just telling this story to show you how it is here. There are a lot of rules... If you're able to keep yourself on a regular schedule for doing the nucleic acid tests, then it's pretty smooth sailing because you always have a valid test when someone asks for it- but keeping to that schedule requires being organized and planning ahead and having enough flexibility in your work time that you're able to go get tested during the times when the line is shortest (ie, don't try to go at 6:30 pm when everyone is getting off work). It's not easy for everyone.
But also, nobody is really enforcing all these rules 100% of the time. If you don't have whatever negative test result you are required to have, you're probably still fine because the security guards don't care enough to actually check. But you still have to worry about it, because yeah, there is a chance they won't let you in.
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Overall
I'm just very tired of this. I'm like, "finally we got out of lockdown, we should travel!" But then I'm like "ugggggh the amount of red tape you have to deal with to travel between different cities in China." Like is it even worth it? And I have a little kid, who thinks looking at ants on the sidewalk is a fun outing, so like, why should we go to all the trouble of actually going to a different city?
We're working on moving to the US. I honestly just want to take my chances with covid, instead of *gestures at all of China* this.
And like... I see that I have trauma from the Shanghai lockdown, because when you say "lockdown" I imagine it would be like what we experienced in April and May, when people needed help and couldn't get help because EVERYTHING was closed, when we couldn't get normal food deliveries, we could only get whatever group buys were approved by the apartment management, and a piece of bread would buy a bag of gold. Lockdown doesn't have to be like that. Right? I mean...? The possibility that I might be somewhere that gets locked down... that doesn't mean it would be as bad as what we went through in April and May.
But I've lost my trust in the Chinese government. It's just too much power to give people over other people's lives, and inevitably there will be some people in power who screw up or who abuse it. Maybe overall the result is better than what other countries did, but, I feel like I just can't live this way.
I mean, I've also lost my trust in the US government's handling of the pandemic, LOL OBVIOUSLY, so, there's that.
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Links
Sixth Tone
In ‘Zero-COVID’ China, the Elderly Are Becoming Ever More Marginalized (August 9) Really good article about all the smartphone apps we now need to use just to live our lives and follow all the pandemic rules, and how that's really difficult for a lot of old people who aren't used to using smart phones. Also, there is a really nice image about what the different codes are (something I have been trying in my many blog posts to explain).
Mass Red, Yellow Health Codes Confuse Henan County Residents (August 5) "Authorities in central China have backtracked on a controversial policy that allowed a county government to arbitrarily change the health code status of residents and curtail their movements following an online backlash over harsh COVID-19 control measures." NOT COOL.
Let’s Have a Picnic Downstairs: Shanghai Neighbors Film Lockdown Life (August 2)
SHINE
Schools to reopen with special measures in place (August 14) "Every day, [all faculty and students] also need to take a nucleic acid test before leaving the campus. The requirement will be adjusted according to developments on the pandemic."
Chinese mainland reports 623 new local confirmed COVID-19 cases (August 14) 623 symptomatic + 1844 asymptomatic, reported in all of mainland China on August 13. I'm sharing this article here to give you a sense of the absolute numbers we're talking about. Honestly, for me these are scary high numbers, and yes the outbreak in Hainan (Sanya) is really bad right now. In other countries though, the situation is completely different, because the absolute numbers are far worse but people care about it much less.
Mandatory weekly nucleic acid testing extended for another month (August 13) "Free and mandatory weekly nucleic acid tests for Shanghai residents will be extended until the end of September as community infections are still being reported in the city, Shanghai's COVID-19 prevention authority announced on Saturday."
Nasal swab unnecessary for inbound travelers (August 11)
Flight suspension rules given clearance to boost foreign exchange (August 7) "According to the 'optimized rule,' an inbound international flight will be suspended for a week, rather than two as previously, if imported COVID-19 cases on board reaches five or 4 percent of the total number of the passengers."
No COVID-19 risk areas in Shanghai from Sunday (August 6) See, they really do get it down to 0. 0 covid cases reported on a given day, and 0 areas in the city designated as "medium risk" or "high risk" of having covid cases. The 0 lasted for a few days, and then on August 12, 7 locally-transmitted covid cases were reported in Shanghai.
PCR validity now counted from when result comes out (August 6) Woo hooray! The previous policy was that, for example, when the health code app shows that you have a negative nucleic acid test result from the past 24 hours, it means the sample was taken within the past 24 hours. Now with the change in the app, it will measure the time from when the result comes out, NOT from when you got tested. This is great because it usually takes maybe 6-12 hours to get the result, so if you want to, say, always make sure you have a valid test from within the past 72 hours, you needed to get tested more frequently than every 72 hours. But now with the change in how the validity time is measured, it makes things easier.
PCR test results to be recognized nationally (July 30) Yes! So, here's the thing about China: every city has its own rules. That's a thing you need to know if you're going to live in China- just because someone says "here is the process to apply for a visa/ notarize a document/ whatever", if they're not in the same city as you, then that doesn't necessarily mean that's the actual process where you are. It's a bureaucracy nightmare. Anyway, so, in a development which should surprise exactly 0 people who have experience living in China, some cities would require travelers entering the city to get covid-tested right away, even though they had already been tested in their origin city, because those test results are from a different city and therefore they are different and you can't use them here. (Also, lol, you know how I keep talking about the "health code app"? Well actually I am using Shanghai's health code app- which is called 随申办- and other cities have their own health code app.) But anyway, good news, the national government has now made a policy that you can't just not accept people's nucleic acid tests just because they were tested in a different city. Like, OBVIOUSLY this should have been the policy all along, but, you know, China.
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