Shanghai Lockdown: Woman Shares Account Of 16-Hour Bus Ride To COVID Quarantine Center

A Shanghai woman told The Wall Street Journal she was forced onto a bus for a nearly 16-hour ride on Sunday after being ordered into a quarantine center because of an “abnormal” COVID-19 test result.

Lu Jiaying said she was contacted early Sunday by a Communist Party official who instructed her to prepare to leave her home on orders “from the central government.”

Once on the bus, the woman and her fellow 25 passengers, many of them elderly, were not given food or water for 14 hours. Even when the authorities handed out food boxes she did not open it, scared of getting infected if she took off her mask.

Their destination was the Shanghai New International Expo Center, the sprawling city’s biggest quarantine facility.

Under current government guidelines, people who test positive, even those who are asymptomatic, are required to stay in hospitals or quarantine facilities, according to The New York Times. Lu had never tested positive for COVID.

“My only wish is to leave this place alive,” she told the Journal on Monday, more than two hours before she and her fellow bus passengers were allowed to disembark.

Inside the quarantine center, she was taken to a room with two other women who said they also had been told they received abnormal test results. Officials have not clarified what that means.

Asked when she would be able to leave the quarantine facility, a volunteer estimated she’d be there up to two weeks.

Lu’s ordeal comes as Shanghai announced on Tuesday it would extend a coronavirus lockdown to cover the entire city. Earlier efforts to target restrictions separately for the western and eastern parts of the city failed to curb infection rates, according to the BBC.

Shanghai reported over 13,000 positive COVID-19 cases on Monday. Even though infections are on the rise, there have been no deaths attributed to the highly contagious omicron BA.2 variant, according to The Associated Press.

“The situation is extremely grim,” said Gu Honghui, director of Shanghai’s working group on epidemic control, according to state media reports reviewed by AP.

Gu urged Shanghai residents to follow current restrictions, and pledged the government would reassess the situation after reviewing the results of mass COVID testing.

A video cited by BBC China correspondent Stephen McDonell shows a woman being arrested by police inside her home after failing to show up for testing. Officers dressed in protective gear ignored her protests and dragged her inside a car.

Chinese authorities came under fire over the weekend for separating children who tested positive from their parents. Video and photos shared on social media showed cribs holding multiple children, some crying, in a Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center hallway without their families.

The health center issued a statement confirming the photos were real, but denied operating a child isolation center. The statement said the children would be transferred to another pediatric center, according to The New York Times.

Irene Yang, a mother of two children who was worried she would face the same situation, called the health center directly, recorded the call and then posted it on Weibo, according to the Times.

“This is all inappropriate and unreasonable, whether they are 10 years old, 5 years old, or 3 years old or 1 year old,” she said. “Otherwise, why do we have legal guardians in place?”

Western diplomats from over 30 countries, not including the U.S., sent letters to Chinese officials denouncing the practice.

A U.S. embassy spokesperson told Reuters the priority was how staff were treated in relation to COVID, adding that they were in contact with the Chinese government over pandemic policies.

China has continued pursuing zero COVID policies, aiming to keep virus levels at extremely low levels or even zero despite the consequences.

Health officials point to the lower effectiveness of Chinese vaccines against the omicron BA.2 variant, along with low vaccination rates in the elderly, as potential risks to ditching the stringent policy.