Chaos At Shanghai Pudong Airport As Cargo Workers Test Positive For Covid-19

When China discovers cases of Covid-19, they go ‘full Wuhan’ in response. They’ve done a good job containing outbreaks, but at tremendous cost to people caught nearby. In Wuhan there were people boarded into their homes. Some of those homes became tombs as people died trapped inside.

Knowing what kind of response to expect from the Chinese government, people react with chaos when news of fresh cases nearby breaks out. On Sunday night Shanghai Pudong airport “descended into chaos” after two cargo handlers there tested positive for Covid-19. Hundreds of flights were cancelled.

Authorities set up a testing site at the airport and ordered all airport cargo employees to be tested. Although passengers reportedly understood and feared that everyone was going to be tested and quarantined. That may have been the initial plan, scaled back as riots were feared.

Photos and videos circulating on Chinese social media show hundreds of people packed closely together inside the garage — the opposite of social distancing — with a line of people in hazmat suits trying to hold back crowds pushing forward.

…As of Monday morning, 17,719 samples had been collected. Of the 11,544 samples that have been tested, all received negative results, officials said at a news conference.

Early in the pandemic China paid residences for reporting no cases but that encouraged reporting no cases versus actually having no cases. Now Hong Kong is paying for positive test results to encourage testing, but will paying for positive cases mean more positive cases?

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. My ass it’s under control in China. This “leak” is proving that China’s myth about virus cases and deaths is just that .. . and this from a left leaning independent. I know a number of professionals in the scientific field that believe China has hidden data and changed death certificates. Why do you build 1,000 bed hospitals over night and do needs for crematorium usage go up 400 percent.

    Someday the truth will come out about the true loss of life and when this actually started in China.

  2. @sunviking82 – I’ve written that China undercounted cases by 40x, and that 26k – 40k likely died in Wuhan alone (https://viewfromthewing.com/air-travel-data-suggests-china-had-nearly-40-times-the-covid-19-cases-than-they-reported/) however that doesn’t mean it’s spreading like wildfire today still, on a per capita basis.

    As far as when this started and where, that remains unclear. Could it have originated in Cambodia? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03217-0 And there were cases in Italy back in September 2019 https://newsaf.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-16/Italian-study-Coronavirus-genesis-in-Italy-earlier-than-thought-VrX7lU44uI/index.html

    In any case my own belief – admittedly not fully supported by evidence, it’s merely a hypothesis – is that close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 have circulated in Asia for some time. It would help explain the relative performance of Cambodia and Laos and why Thailand had 90% asymptomatic cases.

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