No calm for Guangzhou residents in the eye of China’s Covid-19 storm

People living in the city say they are increasingly worried about a Shanghai-style lockdown as cases soar in crowded migrant district

Some are stockpiling food and others report they have been left waiting for official contact after receiving red health codes

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People queue for Covid-19 testing at Flower City Square in Guangzhou. Photo: Reuters

Published: 7:44pm, 18 Nov 2022Updated: 8:45pm, 18 Nov 2022

Red health codes sparked a sleepless night and hours of uncertainty for advertising employee Qiu Ying and her husband, who are living at the epicentre of Guangzhou’s biggest Covid-19 outbreak since the pandemic began.

Qiu, who works for an advertising company in the city, provincial capital of the southern capital of Guangdong, said the couple were issued with the red codes via their phones on Thursday, despite testing negative earlier that day.

“We didn’t know whether to take our two-year-old son with us to the isolation hotel or to leave him at home with his grandma [who still has] a green code,” she said.

Restricted to their home by the red code, Qiu and her husband could only wait. By noon on Friday, they were still waiting. No one had come to take them away or put a seal on their door.

“There may be too many people given red codes and yellow codes, and local health authorities and volunteers are already too busy to deal with our case,” Qiu said.

Qiu and her family live in the eye of the storm in Haizhu, a crowded district where cases have continued to climb, even after it was locked down on November 4.