COVID-19 closes doors at Shanghai Disney

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Visitors to Shanghai Disney have been trapped inside and won’t be allowed out until they test negative for COVID after the amusement park was shut down in the latest outbreak.

Videos online show people rushing to escape the theme park after a lockdown was announced, as well as fleeing other major centres and shops such as Ikea.

The Shanghai COVID crackdown comes after China’s biggest city, home to 26 million people, reported 10 locally transmitted cases.

Shanghai Disney said at 11.39am local time on Monday it would immediately shut the main theme park and surrounding areas including its shopping street until further notice to comply with virus curbs.

But in one consolation to those stuck inside the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’, the rides have reportedly been kept operational.

The Shanghai government said on its official WeChat account the park was barring people from entering or exiting and that all visitors inside the site would need to await the results of their tests before they could leave.

Anyone who had visited the park since October 27 would need to test for COVID-19 three times in three days, it said.

Neither the Shanghai government nor the Disney resort gave further details. The resort had on Saturday said that it had started operating with a reduced workforce to comply with COVID measures.

Shanghai reported 10 locally transmitted cases for October 30, all of which it said were people without symptoms.

The closure marks the latest disruption for the Shanghai Disney Resort, which was shut for over three months during Shanghai’s lockdown earlier this year.

The park was also closed for two days in November last year with more than 30,000 visitors stuck inside, after authorities ordered all of them to be tested in a contact tracing exercise.

Local authorities across China have continued to impose abrupt and extreme measures to cut any possibility of virus transmission once cases arise, in line with the country’s ultra-strict zero-tolerance approach towards COVID-19.

-with Reuters