Health guards force to lock customers inside Chinese Ikea store

Shanghai: Covid-19 is creating new scenes of chaos in China. From Shanghai, where flash lockdowns have been ordered, where positive cases or their close contacts have been detected. Videos have been surfaced featuring an Ikea store where health officials trying to lock the store to quarantine customers after one of them had been in close contact with an infected patient, IANS reported citing media reports.

BBC reported that videos show guards trying close the doors of the store, but a crowd forces them open and escapes.

Shanghai already went into a two-month lockdown earlier this year. After flash-lockdowns were imposed as part of "zero-Covid", many were being quarantined at unusual places such as hot pot restaurants, gyms and offices, BBC reports.

According to the news house, the Ikea store was ordered to shut down after close contact with a six-year-old boy who tested positive after returning to Shanghai from Lhasa in Tibet had visited.

Shanghai Health Commission deputy director Zhao Dandan said on Sunday that those who were at the Ikea store and related areas must quarantine for two days, followed by five days of health monitoring. Shanghai Daily reported that as of Sunday, 400 close contacts of the six-year-old boy - who is asymptomatic - had been traced, while 80,000 people had been ordered to undergo PCR testing.

Meanwhile, Ikea said that the store was shut because of Covid-19 restrictions.

Despite the huge impact the zero-Covid approach is imparting on the Chinese economy, the Chinese regime is sticking to the same. The general public in the country is also raising their voices against this.

There were other videos from Shanghai last week, people were seen running out of a building after rumours of an abnormal Covid-19 result surfaced, BBC reported.

The stringent lockdown imposed on Shanghai earlier this year had witnessed widespread food shortages and poor living conditions in quarantine centres. Citizens were seen engaged in furious arguments with the health staff, protesting the severe restrictions then.

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