Shanghai Lockdown: Officials Install Door Alarms to Prevent Escapes

Shanghai’s government on Thursday began installing electronic door alarms on some residences to prevent people from leaving their homes while the city’s entire populace remains under a state-mandated Chinese coronavirus lockdown, China’s state-run Global Times reported on Friday.

“Those who are required to quarantine at home will have sensors placed on their doors,” Shanghai’s government said on April 21. The stipulation was made in a municipal notice issued late Thursday night that went into immediate effect upon its release.

The BBC on Friday also reported on Shanghai’s newly escalated lockdown measures, noting they would “include placing electronic door alarms to prevent those infected from leaving.”

The door alarms are part of the Shanghai government’s newly tightened rules for the urban center’s ongoing lockdown, which began on April 5 and applies to all of the city’s nearly 26 million residents.

Communist Party officials in charge of Shanghai held a meeting late Friday night in which they “vowed to … take a more forceful approach to implement a zero-COVID [Chinese coronavirus] strategy across all aspects of the battle with the virus,” according to the Global Times.

The newspaper, which is run by China’s ruling Communist Party, provided examples on April 22 of how Shanghai’s lockdown has intensified in recent days, writing:

Shanghai resident Li Cuihua, who lives in a residential community under sealed-off management, meaning she is not supposed and allowed to step out of her door, told the Global Times that her community issued a notice on Thursday night [April 21] that the volunteers will come door to door to do nucleic tests for the residents in the upcoming five days.

Catherin You, a Shanghai resident, told the Global Times that Jingan district, where she lives and residents were previously allowed to walk outside the community, upgraded its restrictions on Thursday [April 21] asking its residents not leave the compound and stay put at home, and only to go downstairs to get food and other life necessities.

Shanghai’s city-wide lockdown began on April 5, though a mass testing initiative for the Chinese coronavirus saw one-half of Shanghai sealed off for five days at a time from March 28 to April 5. The metropolis, which is a global financial and manufacturing hub and home to the world’s busiest shipping container port, has suffered from its latest epidemic of the Chinese coronavirus since early March. Shanghai ordered all schools in the city to shut down on March 11 and then steadily increased restrictions to a total lockdown by early April. The measures have seen residents, regardless of their Chinese coronavirus status (i.e. positive or negative), forcibly quarantined in state-run sites. Asymptomatic people, who made up the majority of Shanghai’s Chinese coronavirus caseload in early April, have been shipped off to state quarantine as well.

“Shanghai’s quarantine policy has been criticised for separating children from parents and putting asymptomatic cases among those with symptoms,” Reuters observed on April 5.

Shanghai’s lockdown has additionally seen the city’s wealthy populace express concern online over dire food shortages.