KUALA LUMPUR, March 23 — A woman in China had to eat all her meals at a hotpot restaurant for three days after the restaurant was temporarily shuttered with all its customers in it a patrons tested positive for Covid-19.
The woman, identified by her surname Wang, had visited the restaurant at Zhengzhou in Henan province on March 18 where a Covid patient had visited earlier in the day, Mothership reported.
Wang arrived at the restaurant with four other friends at 10.30pm and found herself locked in at 11.40pm as she wanted to leave.
Taking to social media, Wang said restaurant workers ensured there was free flow of food for the some 40 patrons during their quarantine period.
The restaurant employees, she said, prepared noodles for patrons at around 3am for supper, served up a stir fry for breakfast, and provided food for lunch.
This was on top of the unlimited free hotpot, and patrons could order whatever they wanted.
Despite the restaurant’s efforts to make patrons comfortable, Wang said she was stuffed silly and described her experience as outrageous.
Wang’s encounter was a result of China’s zero-Covid policy, where it has adopted an iron fist approach and shut down venues immediately in the event of a positive Covid-19 case.
This is to snuff out potential Covid-19 clusters, and to stop the virus from spreading.
Some 100 visitors at 1788 Square were also locked in the shopping mall in Jing’an, Shanghai, in January.
The mall had to be closed after two staff from a nearby bubble tea shop were found to have been infected with Covid-19.
As a result, all of the mall’s visitors and office workers had to get tested, and this resulted in some of them spending the night inside the mall.
China locked down an industrial city of nine million people overnight and reported more than 4,000 virus cases, as the nation’s “zero-Covid” strategy is confronted by an Omicron wave.
Health authorities reported 4,770 new infections across the country on Tuesday, the bulk in the north-eastern province of Jilin, as the city of Shenyang in neighbouring Liaoning province was ordered to lockdown late Monday, The Guardian reported.
