The fear of imposing a closure due to one case of a person infected with Covid-19 last weekend, sparked panic in an IKEA furniture group store in Shanghai, according to scenes spread widely on the Internet and verified by AFP.
China is implementing a strict health strategy to combat COVID-19, placing infected and sometimes contacts in quarantine, imposing targeted closure measures, and conducting comprehensive and mandatory PCR examinations.
Last spring, China’s economic capital, Shanghai, underwent a two-month lockdown to combat the country’s worst epidemic in two years.
After discovering one case of contact on Saturday in the “IKEA” store, the authorities tried to detain all customers of the Swedish group, with the aim of imposing a quarantine on them.
Videos spread widely on social media showed families stuck in the store behind glass doors.
In other scenes, customers could be seen fleeing in fright through a door that looked like an emergency exit for the store in Shuhui District.
The guards had difficulties keeping the doors closed due to the size of the crowd.
This kind of scene is not uncommon in China. Also in Shanghai, employees fled Friday after a case of contact was discovered in an office building in Huangpu District, according to scenes verified by AFP.
Recently, the strict measures implemented in China to combat the spread of the virus, including the spontaneous placement of infected people in quarantine centers, arouse the discontent of part of the population.
At the beginning of the month, 80,000 tourists were quarantined on the tropical island of Hainan (south), which is a very popular destination in China at this time of the year.
While some have managed to return to their home towns, tens of thousands of vacationers are still stranded on the island.
Images verified by AFP showed a portion of the disgruntled residents protesting at the end of last week, demanding a meeting with local officials.
On Tuesday, China recorded 2,368 new local cases of COVID-19. Since 2020, the country has closed its borders to foreign tourists due to the epidemic.