Following a public uproar, Shanghai is allowing at least some parents to stay with children infected with COVID-19, making an exception to a policy of isolating anyone who tests positive.
The announcement came as China’s largest city remained in lockdown and conducted more mass testing yesterday following another jump in new cases.
A top city health official said at a news conference that parents can apply to stay with children with “special needs” and accompany them if they fully comprehend the health risks and sign an agreement.
The parents must wear masks, dine at a different time than their children, avoid sharing items with them and strictly follow all regulations, said Wu Qianyu of the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission. She did not define what qualifies as “special needs.”
Her announcement followed Chinese state media reports a day earlier that an isolation site set up at the Shanghai New International Expo Center was accepting children with parents. The city has opened sprawling isolation centers for tens of thousands of people to isolate the growing number of positive cases.
Reports that parents were being separated from their infected children had sparked a wave of protest online last weekend, fueled by photos showing several children in each cot with no parents in sight.
Shanghai reported 17,077 new cases detected over the previous day, all but 311 of them in people who showed no symptoms. Under China’s zero-COVID approach, the city requires all those who test positive to be held in designated locations for observation, along with their close contacts.
The latest cases bring Shanghai’s total to around 90,000 in an outbreak that began last month. No deaths have been ascribed to the outbreak driven by the omicron BA.2 variant, which is much more infectious but also less lethal than the previous delta strain. Two deaths have been reported in another ongoing outbreak in Jilin province in China’s northeast.
An official from the EU Chamber of Commerce in China joined a growing chorus of criticism of the Shanghai lockdown, which has disrupted daily life and commerce in a major financial and business center.
“We see a severe shortage of living necessities, particularly fresh vegetables, and citizens are unable to get their deliveries via their apps,” said Bettina Schoen-Behanzin, chair of the chamber’s Shanghai chapter.
While some residents are receiving food supplies from their district government, she said that “a kind of black market” has developed charging “rocket-high prices” for fruits and vegetables.
“Another really big fear is ending up in one of those mass central quarantine sites,” Schoen-Behanzin said in an online event for member companies and journalists. MDT/AP
