Flights Cancelled at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport After COVID Outbreak

Flights Cancelled at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport After COVID Outbreak
Nov 25, 2020 By eChinacities.com

Hundreds of flights to and from Shanghai’s Pudong Airport have been cancelled and all staff are being tested after a small COVID-19 outbreak was found to have originated there. As a result, certain parts of Shanghai have now been designated “medium risk” areas.

Pudong Airport COVID outbreak

The outbreak was traced to two cargo handlers who had been charged with cleaning a container after a shipment from North America, Chinese health officials say. According to Sun Xiaodong, a local disease control expert, the two workers cleaned the container on October 30 before testing positive for the virus on November 9 and 10. Sun added that the airport employees were not wearing masks inside the damp container and claimed the virus strain detected was similar to that found in North America.

On Saturday, the city also reported that a 34-year-old hospital employee, the wife of a logistics worker at the airport, also tested positive for coronavirus. As a result, more than 4,000 employees at the Pudong hospital have been tested.

Pudong Airport also began testing all staff on Sunday night, resulting in photos of videos of chaotic scenes as thousands of workers packed themselves into an underground carpark for the mass testing. Meanwhile, hundreds of flights have been cancelled.

According to state media the Global Times, at least seven COVID-19 cases have so far been confirmed among airport employees. All, however, are reportedly from the cargo and not the passenger side of the facility. Until this latest outbreak, Shanghai had gone five months without any community transmission.

As winter draws in, officials are warning of more sporadic COVID-19 outbreaks across the country. Recent weeks have seen outbreaks, mass testing and the shut down of some services in the northern city of Tianjin and Manzhouli in Inner Mongolia.

A total of three million people are being tested in Tianjin’s Binhai New Area after five cases were detected there on Friday, according to Xinhua. One of the cases is said to be a worker who had been handling imported frozen meat. The Chinese government has ordered all imported frozen food to be disinfected after several other incidents of the virus being found on packaging, despite the World Health Organization saying the risk of transmission from such sources is low.

Meanwhile, Manzhoul went into effective lockdown on Saturday after just two cases were reported in the city of 240,000 near the border with Russia and Mongolia. Rail services to and from the city have been suspended, as have all flights from the region’s main airport of Hohhot.

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Keywords: Pudong Airport COVID outbreak

7 Comments

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Alashseyi

Seriously pttff

Dec 17, 2020 08:10 Report Abuse

sorrel

If the PCR Test works - Why the False Positives? If the Masks work - Why the Six Feet? If the Six Feet works-- Why the Masks? If all Three work-- Why the Lock down? If all Four work -- Why the Vaccine? If the Vaccine is Safe -- Why the No Liability Clause?

Nov 26, 2020 15:23 Report Abuse

ambivalentmace

convenient to blame this on a foreign container, when it started in China, whatever makes you sleep at night safely I suppose

Nov 26, 2020 07:18 Report Abuse

Guest17903108

When will this finally end? :(

Nov 25, 2020 19:04 Report Abuse

sorrel

the standard 'test' used to 'detect' Covid has been deemed inadmissible as evidence of 'Covid' in a Portuguese court and is being used as the basis for similar cases across Europe.

Nov 25, 2020 15:35 Report Abuse

andybrocks2012

goes on and on

Nov 25, 2020 10:30 Report Abuse