- Melissa Chu
- BBC News
Shoppers trying to escape IKEA furniture store in panic of being locked up due to COVID
Videos went viral showing chaotic scenes at an IKEA furniture store in Shanghai on Saturday, as shoppers appeared trying to flee the place for fear of being confined there.
Health officials tried to close the store in Xuhui district, after it was found that a shopper had had close contact with one of those infected with Covid.
In the videos, the guards are shown closing the store gate before shoppers crowd them and force them to open the gate and flee the store.
Shanghai endured a severe closure that lasted about two months earlier this year. Since then, under the strict “zero-Covid” strategy applied in the country, the city of 20 million people has witnessed sudden closures of areas where cases of infection were discovered or close contacts with cases of infection.
As a result, many in Shanghai found themselves locked up in unusual places – including restaurants, gyms, or even work offices.
Instructions were issued to force an immediate closure of the IKEA store after it was revealed that close contact had occurred with a six-year-old child with Covid.
An examination was conducted for the child upon his return to Shanghai from Lhasa, a city in Tibet, according to Zhao Dandan, deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission.
The health official did not disclose the time of close contact with the injured child in the store. But Zhao Dandan said that everyone who was in the IKEA store or the surrounding areas at the time should be immediately banned in place for two days before undergoing a five-day health follow-up.
By Sunday, nearly 400 close contacts had been traced to the six-year-old – who, incidentally, does not show any symptoms of infection.
About 80,000 people have been instructed to undergo a PCR test, according to the Shanghai Daily.
On Sunday, IKEA customer service said the store was closed due to anti-Covid reasons. IKEA’s flagship store opened in Xuhui in 1998, making the Swedish furniture retailer’s first outlet in China. The number of IKEA stores across China has now reached 35.
China adheres to its zero-Covid strategy to combat the spread of the Corona virus, despite the huge effects of this strategy on the economy and the growing protests from the population.
The panicked scenes at the IKEA store follow videos taken last week showing people in another part of Shanghai jogging out of a building following rumors of a person with COVID-19 at the scene.
The closures of Shanghai over the course of this year coincided with reports of a shortage of food commodities and deteriorating living conditions in the areas subject to quarantine.
And spread in Shanghai, videos of frustrated residents engaged in heated arguments with quarantine officials, while others appeared in videos screaming from windows in protest of what they suffer from quarantine restrictions.