Shanghai residents have been seen in a video wrangling with authorities in hazmat suits as anger and desperation at the city’s Covid lockdown continues.
Shanghai posted a slight decline in new infections on Friday as the lockdown in the commercial capital at the centre of China's Covid-19 outbreak, coupled with curbs elsewhere, threatens to take a heavier toll on the world's second-biggest economy.
In footage, livestreamed on WeChat, about 30 people wearing hazmat suits with the word “police” can be seen scuffling with residents on Thursday.
Shanghai residents in the Zhangjiang compound in the eastern Pudong district pleaded with police to let them stay in their rented apartments after officers moved to take nine residential buildings for temporary quarantine facilities.
A woman could be heard weeping as she filmed the scene, which was watched by more than 10,000 people before it was abruptly cut, with the WeChat livestream platform announcing it had contained “dangerous content”.
“It’s not that I don’t want to cooperate with the country, but how would you feel if you live in a building where the blocks are only 10 metres (30 feet) apart, everyone has tested negative, and these people are allowed in?,” said the woman who was filming and did not disclose her real name.
The video could not be independently verified but the dispute was confirmed by the building’s management on Friday.
The Zhangjiang Group, which owns the compound, said authorities had converted five of its vacant buildings into isolation facilities and it had been advised a further nine buildings would be converted.
Under China’s zero-Covid policy, everyone who tests positive must quarantine at designated sites and the neighbours are asked to isolate in their homes for 14 days, which has stoked public fear about the consequences of catching the virus.
Shanghai has become the epicentre of China’s largest outbreak since the virus was first identified in Wuhan in late 2019, recording more than 300,000 Covid infections since March.
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The city has begun converting schools, recently finished apartment blocks and exhibition halls into quarantine centres, and announced last week it had set up more than 160,000 beds across more than 100 make-shift hospitals.
Footage of robot police dogs enforcing strict quarantines and people screaming in anger over lockdowns from the windows of their apartments has gone viral in recent days.
