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Escape from Foxconn: Workers recount Covid chaos at iPhone factory
In early October, supervisors suddenly warned him that 3,000 colleagues had been taken into quarantine after someone tested positive for Covid-19 at the factory.
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This file photo taken on February 22, 2013 shows a man waiting outside the gate of a Foxconn recruitment center in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong province. Chinese authorities locked down the area surrounding the world's largest iPhone factory on November 2, 2022, after workers fled to avoid a coronavirus outbreak and the resulting restrictions.
(AFP/STR)
Z
hang Yao recalls the moment he realised something had gone deeply wrong at the Chinese mega-factory where he and hundreds of thousands of other workers assembled iPhones and other high-end electronics.
In early October, supervisors suddenly warned him that 3,000 colleagues had been taken into quarantine after someone tested positive for Covid-19 at the factory.
"They told us not to take our masks off," Zhang, speaking under a pseudonym for fear of retaliation, told AFP by telephone.
What followed was a weeks-long ordeal including food shortages and the ever-present fear of infection, before he finally escaped on Tuesday.
Zhang's employer, Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn, has said it faces a "protracted battle" against infections and imposed a "closed loop" bubble around its sprawling campus in central China's Zhengzhou city.
Local authorities locked down the area surrounding the major Apple supplier's factory on Wednesday, but not before reports emerged of employees fleeing on foot and a lack of adequate medical care at the plant.
China is the last major economy committed to a zero-Covid strategy, persisting with snap lockdowns, mass testing and lengthy quarantines in a bid to stamp out emerging outbreaks.
