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Coronavirus China
ChinaScience

Covid-19 in China: panic in Ikea as health authorities lock down store

  • Videos on social media show mayhem as shoppers tried to get out before the doors were locked
  • ‘Temporary control measures’ imposed after authorities found out a close contact of a case had visited

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A screen grab from a social media video shows shoppers trying to leave an Ikea store in Shanghai before it is locked down on Saturday. Photo: Handout
Bloomberg
Scenes of mayhem unfolded in an Ikea in Shanghai as health authorities tried to lock down the store on Saturday 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 close contact of a six-year-old boy with an asymptomatic Covid infection had been there.

They did not say when the close contact was in the store. Everyone at Ikea and other affected areas would need to quarantine for two days and then do five days of health surveillance, said Zhao Dandan, deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission, in a briefing on Sunday.

Those who did not get out were said to have been kept in the store from 8pm until just after midnight, when they were transferred to quarantine hotels. Photo: Handout
Those who did not get out were said to have been kept in the store from 8pm until just after midnight, when they were transferred to quarantine hotels. Photo: Handout

The snap lockdowns deployed as part of China’s zero-Covid 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.

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