Chinese employees are being urged to live at their workplaces as the country pursues a zero-COVID policy, reports say

• Chinese workers are being asked to live in their offices if they cannot work from home, reports say.
• China has implemented tighter COVID-19 measures in pursuit of the country’s zero-tolerance policy.
• Shanghai residents clashed with police and begged to be let in their homes used as quarantine sites.

Some Chinese employees are being encouraged to live in their offices as the country pursues a zero COVID-19 strategy.

Sky News and other outlets reported the story. 

China has implemented tighter COVID-19 measures as Shanghai faced an outbreak that prompted mass lockdowns in the city for weeks.

The measures prompted residents to clash with police officers on April 14 as they couldn’t go home due to authorities co-opting their buildings to use as COVID-19 quarantine sites. 

Some residents in Xian, a city southwest of Beijing, have been encouraged to live at their workplaces, Sky News reported. The directive comes amid orders to avoid unnecessary trips. Those with asymptomatic or very mild symptoms must go to quarantine facilities. 

Xian authorities did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment made outside of normal working hours. 

Quartz reported on March 31 that manufacturers in the southern Chinese tech hub Shenzhen put in place similar arrangements for workers to live at factories in the hope of reducing the lockdown’s economic toll.

GE Healthcare, a medical tech company, has set up temporary beds to let workers live in their factories, according to Chinese financial video producer Yicai. 

While the country has adopted a zero-tolerance policy against the virus, families have been separated and people are asking for more food. This is despite the government offering to deliver food to those in isolation, per the news report. 

The conditions in which workers are left can be difficult. A truck driver who delivers vegetables and fruit from Shandong Province has been stranded in Shanghai, The New York Times reported. 

Authorities identified him as a close contact of a person with COVID-19 and ordered him to be immediately quarantined. The Times reported that he stopped near a highway three weeks ago and has been waiting ever since.

He told the newspaper: “We can’t get off the highway, every exit is guarded. We just want to go home. I couldn’t get enough food the other day, and my body can’t take it anymore.”

In a news release on Monday, the National Bureau of Statistics of China said that in the first quarter, the momentum of recovery continued.

The bureau added, however, “we must be aware that with the domestic and international environment becoming increasingly complicated and uncertain, the economic development is facing significant difficulties and challenges.”