Thousands of Shanghai residents are being relocated to hotels in emergency isolation measures after local authorities said hospital workers and downtown patients tested positive for the CCP virus.
Surrounding areas have also been blocked and residents are facing conditions of rapid worsening as the government tries to stop the spread of the virus.
Authorities also conducted mass tests, with the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission reporting nine recently confirmed COVID-19 cases on 22 January. COVID-19 is a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Six of the cases were determined to be from local transmissions, while three were imported.
The local transmission cases were all from Shanghai’s Huangpu District – the same area where COVID-19 positive hospital workers lived.
The Zhaotong residential community in the district was modernized in a medium-risk area on January 21, after the positive cases were confirmed to the public. The area was then closed, and groups of residents moved to hotels on January 21 and 22.
According to Chinese media reports, the Bund police station said about 900 people were relocated in 5 hours on the afternoon of January 21, and another 1,100 people were relocated on January 22. .
A hotel owner in the Zhaotong community told The Epoch Times that it closed its business on January 21, and all staff and customers were sent to other hotels for isolation.
“There is a resident here who tested positive in the cancer hospital. He lives in our Zhaotong community. (We) are all isolated in hotels and here are 15,000 people who have been tested. The whole community is empty. ”
This is the first time that Shanghai has adopted relocation as an isolation measure since the beginning of the epidemic. The Epoch Times got a video showing people being moved.
Shanghai Zhongfu Shifuhui Hotel, home to one of the travelers who tested positive for COVID-19, has also been upgraded to a medium-risk area and all areas surrounding the hotel have been blocked. On January 21, two hotel employees and a guest tested positive for COVID-19.
A restaurant owner near Zhongfu Shifuhui Hotel told The Epoch Times that many local roads were blocked and the hotel and surrounding areas were completely blocked.
Yesterday they had to close the restaurant, the owner said.
Local authorities said they had formed a team of 3,100 people to help track contacts and investigate cases.
Mass testing
After the first cases in Shanghai in two local hospitals were publicly announced on January 21, the authorities requested that all staff members of the city’s medical institutions be tested for COVID-19.
Testing was soon extended to all at-risk residents. City health officials announced on January 22 that they had tested 15,918 people for the virus.
The Epoch Times obtained a video showing hospital workers and residents waiting in line to be tested, while streets in Shanghai were blocked and residents were told by health workers that they would be relocated and isolated.
Shanghai resident Li said to The Epoch Times on January 21 that he was concerned that the Chinese communist regime was not yet telling the truth about the epidemic.
“This one [the government] said that over 10,000 people were tested and how many results did not come out? There may be positive aspects among the unannounced, “he said.
Panic among medical students
Following confirmed cases at hospitals – Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center and Renji Hospital, which is affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine – panic has spread among students in related medical schools, with many worried that schools would be blocked and they would be required to remain on campus. Students began encouraging each other to leave campus overnight before the end of the semester.
A student posted on social media that he left campus and arrived home at 2:30 a.m. on January 22.
“Students who were scheduled to do experiments on January 30 have been rescheduled for today,” he said in the post. “The campus is full of the sound of suitcases rubbing the ground. I feel like the epidemic is so close to me. I really hope that the Shanghai epidemic will be effectively controlled as soon as possible. ”
Gu Xiaohua, Xiao Lushen and Luo Ya contributed to this report.