China Ikea shoppers panic as store locked down on Covid risk

Bloomberg

Scenes of mayhem unfolded in an Ikea in Shanghai as health authorities tried to lock down the store and quarantine those on site after learning someone who had been in contact with a Covid-19 patient had visited.
News of the flash shutdown sent shoppers fleeing and screaming in an effort to get out of the building before the doors were locked, videos on social media showed. Shanghai’s 25 million residents are well versed in lockdowns, after being barred from leaving their homes for two months this spring in an effort to eradicate the virus.
Health authorities in the financial hub said that they
imposed “temporary control measures” at the store, after they found out that a of a 6-year-old boy with an asymptomatic Covid infection had been there. They didn’t say when the close contact was in the store. Everyone at Ikea and other affected areas will need to quarantine for two days and then do five days of health surveillance, said Zhao Dandan, deputy director of Shanghai Health Commission, in a briefing.
The snap lockdowns deployed as part of China’s Covid Zero strategy — where people in a building or an urban district are banned from leaving with little notice — have led to numerous instances of panic around the country. In recent months, residents in the technology hub Shenzhen, the capital of Sichuan province, Chengdu, and the vacation island of Hainan have scaled fences, sprinted down the beach and poured out of office towers after learning that lockdowns were to be imposed.
There were 2,312 new infections reported nationwide on August 15, the first time in more than three months that cases topped 2,000 for three consecutive days in China. The widening outbreak is showing that nowhere is safe, including resort areas where residents hoped to relax or regions that emerged from the worst flareups.
In a video circulated on social media, an announcement can be heard inside the Ikea saying officials asked the shopping centre to immediately close and to stop people from entering or leaving.
In response to the epidemic prevention guidelines, Ikea Shanghai Xuhui was temporarily closed on August 14 and 15, and was expected to reopen on Tuesday, the company said.