Shanghai lockdown 'like February 2020 all over again,' says journalist

Story Transcript

As Chinese authorities expanded lockdown measures to try to contain coronavirus cases in Shanghai, a journalist based in the city said it "feels like February 2020 all over again."

The lockdown, which begins early Friday morning, is the most extensive in China in two years, shutting down the country's biggest city and sparking concerns over supply chain issues that could reach North America and Europe.

Rebecca Kanthor, who reports for the industry publication Plastics News, and is a correspondent for the PRX radio show The World, says that most people have been patient while waiting in long lines to stock up on groceries and supplies.

The country is pursuing a zero-COVID policy, which means that relatively low case numbers sparked the lockdown. Reuters reported that Shanghai counted 355 symptomatic cases and 5,298 asymptomatic cases on Thursday, down slightly from the previous day.

Here is part of her conversation with As It Happens guest host Gillian Findlay.

I understand you've just come back from your last walk before this lockdown. What's the city looking like?

I just walked ... onto the street from my apartment and it's just eerily quiet. I think I saw a bus go by, an empty bus, but nothing else on the street, no people.

There's police tape sort of strung between trees along the side of the road, so to prevent people from walking around. So the streets are blocked off and it was just an empty street.

I walked in the middle of the street and took a selfie because it's never, ever that empty.

You have just come off another lockdown, because there have been smaller lockdowns, I understand. What are you preparing yourself for this time?

Shanghai is divided by a river, and the lockdown has been carried out in two phases. So the other side of the river, they've been on lockdown for four days now, and now it's our turn.

In the past couple of days, we've just sort of been running around trying to get groceries, get supplies because they say that the lockdown is going to be for five days, but I have a feeling it could be much longer. So, you know, just trying to get vegetables, you know, necessities, just to try and stock up.

We've certainly seen lots of postings on social media of people standing in long lines and empty supermarket shelves. What's it been like?

I was going around all different places trying to find just basic vegetables, and it was really hard to find the first couple of days. Today, I think finally deliveries [of] supplies started coming in.

But ... yeah, there were a lot of empty shelves and that was partly due to people just sort of panic buying, but also partly due to supply chain issues, because some of the wholesale markets had been closed down. 

There's mass testing going on as well?

That's right. So [the district of] Pudong shut down early Monday morning.... There were several mass testing [events].

Once they did that testing, the results came back and there was, you know, a huge uptick in cases.

It's a huge undertaking. There's a lot of people involved in this effort. I think they're bringing in support teams from outside of Shanghai as well to carry out all the testing.

There's a lot of anxiety, but ... we always tell them, you know, "We're so lucky we're still together, we're all healthy."- Journalist Rebecca Kanthor, on speaking to her children about lockdown

What happens to people who test positive?

In Shanghai or in China, they differentiate between [an] asymptomatic case and a symptomatic case. So if you are a symptomatic case you go to a COVID hospital and you can only get out of that hospital if you get two negative COVID tests. And that's sometimes very difficult.... People can be feeling much better, but they're still testing positive.

If you're an asymptomatic case, it really depends on where you are. Sometimes you're being sent to a centralized quarantine facility. Those have been set up in hotels, but also in gymnasiums, exhibition centres, these just massive places that people are staying. But then also some people are quarantining in their home for 14 days. But that also means that their entire community will also have to quarantine for those 14 days as well, so... it's uneven, sort of, what happens when you test positive.

The COVID numbers in Shanghai, compared to some places in the world now, do not seem that high. While much of the world is trying to learn to live with the virus, China's policy is still aimed at trying to stamp it out. Is that a source of frustration?

I think it is. You know, the policy here really is about, you know, stopping the transmission of COVID. That does not take into account that, you know, there are people with underlying health conditions, people who are trying to seek medical care, people with pets, you know, there's a lot of different populations of people, homeless people.

There's a lot of different people who are negatively impacted by this policy and by this strategy. 

What about the financial industry, though? We've been hearing stories of, you know, traders and fund managers sleeping underneath their desks at work.

Right, because if they go home, they will get locked in at home. So different industries, including the financial industry, they have come up with with their solution, which is to have some people on staff just staying in the office and sleeping in the office so ... they can stay working.

Of course there's the human impact of all of this. I understand you have children. What's it ... like to be going into yet another lockdown with a family?

I think it was two weeks ago, we went on to online schooling, and that's the first time kids in Shanghai went on online schooling since 2020. So, you know, it's still a new thing because they don't really remember it two years ago.

There's a lot of anxiety with my little kids because, you know, they're seeing us preparing, getting food ready. They're hearing us talk about the lockdown. They're hearing us talking about, you know, we don't know when they'll let us back to normal life.

There's a lot of anxiety, but ... we always tell them, you know, "We're so lucky we're still together, we're all healthy." Because my daughter has classmates who tested positive and went to the hospital and were not able to be with their parents. And that was a really tough experience for both the parents and the child.

Written by Andrea Bellemare with files from CBC News. Interview produced by Katie Geleff. Q&A edited for length and clarity.