Shanghai Resident Says Student Tests Positive for COVID-19 Days After Pudong Airport Case

A group of tourists stand by the Bund near the Huangpu river across the Pudong New Financial district, in Shanghai, China on March 14, 2016. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)

A school in Shanghai has been locked down due to a locally-transmitted case of COVID-19, The Epoch Times has learned.

A local resident, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, shared a “forecast notice” allegedly issued by the local Communist Party “community office,” which allows Beijing to oversee on local affairs alongside local governments.

The notice said that a student from Yingqian Village in the locked down region of Pudong had developed a high temperature on Nov. 10 and was sent to hospital for treatment. His first COVID-19 test there was negative but a nucleic acid test confirmed the next day that he was positive for COVID-19.

The notice declared that the local area around the school be put into isolation, adding that an investigation had been launched. The school and places that the student had visited were also placed under lockdown and areas were disinfected, while authorities have begun contact tracing.

Friends living near the school told the resident that the city had traced the student’s movements to a beef soup restaurant on Jinping Pedestrian Street. The business had been closed down on Nov. 11 with people guarding it overnight. A video of the restaurant being disinfected was circulated online.

Screenshot of the alleged “Forecast Notice” of the student who is suspected of contracting COVID-19. (Provided by an interviewee)

The resident said the student was a friend’s son. The friend had learned that her son’s whole class at Minhang Electronic Industry School was kept in quarantine inside the school on Nov. 10 and Nov. 11 while they waited for the nucleic acid test results.

The news of the case was circulated on WeChat, the popular Chinese social media app.

Screenshot of the WeChat messages of the mother of the student’s classmate. (Provided by an interviewee)

Contact Tracing After Confirmed Case in Pudong Airport

The news came just days after city officials confirmed a case at Pudong International Airport, which according to social media reports, is now the subject of contact tracing efforts.

A Shanghai resident told The Epoch Times that locals shared on WeChat an internal memo allegedly issued by the local Shanghai CDC titled “Introduction to the investigation of Ni XX, a close contact of the confirmed case at Pudong International Airport.” The memo said that Ni was a staff member of Shanghai Eastern Airlines Logistics Co., Ltd., and a colleague of the confirmed patient. They had contact with each other between Nov. 2 to Nov. 5.

The resident added that the contents of the memo had not been officially announced by authorities.

The Epoch Times contacted Shanghai Eastern Airlines Logistics for comment about contact tracing efforts, and was told by a department manager that employees who had been with the confirmed patient had all been taken into centralized quarantine.

But when The Epoch Times contacted several close contacts of Ni, two of them denied ever having been in quarantine.

How the confirmed patient contracted the COVID-19 is still unknown.

Meanwhile, Ms. Li, a company clerk in Shanghai told The Epoch Times that while Shanghai only requires a health code on the phone and normal body temperature readings to travel outside the city, “some companies in Shanghai, including my company, have already stopped all business trips to other places in the country, because people from Shanghai are not welcomed now.”

She believes more companies will do the same.

The Epoch Times staff member Luo Ya contributed to the report.