Corona is still raging in China. The fear is that the capital Beijing will be closed completely and the rest of China will follow, says a Finn who was put in a quarantine center.
Business director of a technology company from Tampere Pekka Laiho recently traveled in the USA and Finland. After returning to his current home country of China, he was diagnosed with corona.
Laiho was tested at the airport and again at the quarantine hotel, where all those arriving from abroad are crowded.
Two positive test results meant that Laiho was rushed to the quarantine center, where, according to Laiho’s estimate, there are at most a couple of hundred fellow sufferers.
– This is a hastily built shack made of parakei or what. The whole city and China is full of these, Laiho tells from Shanghai in a good mood.
The quarantine center has three-person rooms equipped with beds and toilets. Room doors are kept locked. Laiho says that he was lucky. Since there was no room, he was accommodated in the corridor.
– This has turned out to be perhaps the best, because from here you can walk and fight with the gang. It is necessary that time passes. There are similar and same-age fate mates.
According to Laiho, the biggest problem has been the lack of pillows or “myths, which are called pillows”, as he himself says.
– There’s really nothing to offer here. A good internet connection and a bed and a blanket and a blanket called a pillow. I brought a better pillow from the hotel. Time passes while lying there and working.
Corona infections have caused a huge spike in the statistics, for example, very recently. There are almost as many new corona infections as last spring. On Monday, 316 new cases were found in Beijing in fifteen hours. Schools and attractions were closed.
The corona variant Omikron is booming.
Laiho estimates that Beijing may be completely closed in the coming days. Beijing, on the other hand, is often seen as an example that other cities follow. China is not going to get rid of the corona anytime soon.
– Next year will certainly be ugly in light of the statistics. But yes, there are gimmicks and ways to use statistics with your fingers. Next year, the restrictions will probably start to be dismantled bit by bit, because the economic effects are too great. The money is starting to run out, says Laiho.
The resilience of the locals is also being tested, says the 50-year-old Beijinger Zhu news agency Reuters.
– It’s been a while since the pandemic started. This back and forth Rowing and felting is really uncomfortable. My friends’ companies have gone bankrupt, some have lost their jobs. Corona has affected the economy, and we are not even allowed to travel, Zhu lists.
Fierce corona restrictions at the iPhone factory
The endurance of corona restrictions is also being severely tested at Foxconn’s mobile phone factory in Zhengzhou. Hundreds of workers participated in the demonstration at the factory. In videos shared on social media, workers allegedly break windows and surveillance cameras.
The factory’s corona restrictions are exceptional. In addition to working, the employees are forced to stay at the workplace also during their free time in complete isolation from the rest of the world.
Interviewed by Reuters Zhao40, believes that the situation in China is what it is because politics has become involved.
– These actions no longer have much to do with medicine. That’s what I believe. After all, China already declared victory over the virus. And we still can’t open society.
Laiho also suspects the same.
– There are certainly many reasons, and politics is certainly involved in it. With their decisions, the Chinese have backed themselves into a bit of a corner, and it is difficult to make a complete turnaround.
When Laiho is wished for continuation and a speedy recovery, he says tongue-in-cheek that he hopes the disease would get worse.
– Wasn’t the corona supposed to remove the sense of smell and taste. I would hope that the sense of taste would go away, that these local goofs would start to go down my throat better. We eat traditional Chinese factory canteen food here, Laiho grumbles.
Read more:
From the correspondent: A three-year-old lived his life during the corona era and died because of the restrictions – China’s drastic actions are stirring up more and more rebellion
“I couldn’t always stand restrictions” – because of the corona pandemic, China’s poor are only getting poorer
Chinese workers escaped from the iPhone factory, where they had been closed due to corona suspicions