TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Video surfaced over the weekend showing shoppers at an Ikea in Shanghai frantically trying to flee to the exits when word broke that a flash COVID lockdown would be launched.
On Sunday (Aug. 14), videos appeared on Chinese social media showing shoppers at an Ikea in Shanghai's Xuhui District making a mad dash for the exits after being notified on Saturday evening (Aug. 13) that a COVID case had visited the store and a lockdown was being immediately imposed.
In one video, bewildered customers can be seen flocking toward an exit of the megastore, only to realize it's sealed and trying to find another way out. The video then cuts to throngs of people sealed behind doors.
In another scene, security guards try in vain to hold the doors shut as shoppers rush forward and manage to escape. A fourth video shows dozens of people streaming out the front entrance and running in every direction.
Shoppers plow past security guards. (Twitter, Northrop Gundam screenshots)
A Shanghai netizen captured the aftermath and posted it to Weibo. He claimed that he boarded a bus at 12:40 a.m. which took him and fellow customers to a quarantine center, and it was not until 2:45 a.m. that he was finally able to settle in and get some sleep.
Shanghai Daily on Sunday cited Zhao Dandan (趙丹丹), deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission, as saying that the Ikea store in Xuhui and people who had visited had been placed in a two-day quarantine, followed by five-days of health monitoring. The IKEA store was locked down after officials realized a six-year-old boy who had recently tested positive for COVID had visited the establishment.
The boy had recently returned from Lhasa, Tibet on Aug. 9 and received a positive result on a PCR test during his self-health monitoring phase, but was asymptomatic. Officials have identified 396 close contacts as of 4 p.m. on Sunday and over 80,000 people have undergone PCR testing as is the procedure under China's strict zero COVID policy.
Yesterday, an abnormal health code case was presented at an IKEA in Shanghai, & the entire mall was suddenly blocked
Some ppl forced their way out for fear of being sent to concentration camps, but there is actually nowhere to escape under #AmazingChina’s digital surveillance pic.twitter.com/MWpbTOJ3kz
— Donna Wong (@DonnaWongHK) August 14, 2022
Ikea furniture store in 〔錯誤字元無法儲存〕〔錯誤字元無法儲存〕 #Shanghai Xujiahui District suddenly announced lockdown after the detection of 1 Covid positive. 300+ shoppers frantically pushed their way out to escape. The remaining shoppers unluckily trapped inside were forced to the quarantine concentration camps. pic.twitter.com/DmUHhUPk4x
— Northrop Gundam ∀ (@GundamNorthrop) August 14, 2022
