Chaotic scenes occurred at an Ikea store in Shanghai on Saturday, with customers trying to flee while authorities tried to isolate them. Health officials were trying to shut down the store in the Xuhui district because a customer had close contact with a positive case of Covid. The videos show the guards closing the doors at some point, but the crowd opens them up and runs away. Earlier this year, Shanghai was under a two-month shutdown. Since then, in line with the country’s strict “zero-Covid” strategy, the city of 20 million has ordered a tight closure of areas where positive cases or close contacts have been detected. Many have been closed in unusual places, including hot plate restaurants, gyms and offices. The deputy director of the Health Commission said Sunday that the sudden closure order of the IKEA store was due to close contact with a six-year-old boy who tested positive for the virus after returning to Shanghai from Lhasa, Tibet, that he had gone there. Shanghai, Zhao Dandan.
Zhao said people who were in the IKEA store and connected areas should remain in quarantine for two days, followed by five days of health monitoring.
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