Shanghai residents question the human cost of China's Covid quarantines

April 12, 2022: -Lu is aged 99 and was a long-time resident at Shanghai’s Donghai Elderly Care hospital; her loved ones secure that she gets round-the-clock care at the city’s largest center.

Before Covid-19 struck China’s biggest city in the previous month, the country’s worst outbreak since the virus emerged in Wuhan in 2019, infecting multiple patients, doctors, and care workers at the 1,800-bed facility.

Orderlies posted are crying for help on social media, saying they were overwhelmed. Relatives told Reuters that there had been several deaths.

Lu’s relatives asked that she be identified only by her surname, had coronary heart disease, and high blood pressure. She caught Covid and, though she had zero symptoms, was being transferred to an isolation facility, her family was told on March 25.

She died there after seven days, the cause of death listed as her underlying medical conditions.

Among the questions about Lu’s final days was why elderly patients had to be quarantined separately, away from the care workers most familiar with their conditions under China’s quarantine rules.

Her frustrations reflect those of many with the no-tolerance Covid policy of China. Everyone testing positive must quarantine in specialized isolation sites if they show symptoms.

Shanghai is becoming a test case for the country’s strict policy. Home quarantine is not an option, and until public outrage prompted a change, Shanghai was separating Covid-positive children from their parents.

From March 1 to April 9, China’s financial hub reported a few 180,000 locally transmitted infections, 96% asymptomatic. It said no deaths for the period.

A Donghai staffer who was answering the phone on Sunday declined to answer questions, directing Reuters to one more department, which did not respond to repeated calls.

Asked for comment, the Shanghai government sent a local media report with a first-person account of life at one of the quarantine centers. The unidentified author said he wanted to dispel fears that such sites were terrible, which says he received ample meals and medicine but recommends people bring earplugs and eye masks. The authorities did not offer further comment.

On Friday, the United States raised concerns about China’s Covid approach, advising its citizens to reconsider travel to China “due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws and Covid-19 restrictions.” Beijing dismissed the U.S. concerns as “groundless accusations.”