Thousands of visitors who went to the Shanghai Disney Resort for a Halloween carnival Sunday ended up staying a lot longer than planned. Almost 34,000 visitors and staff members had to wait hours to be tested for COVID-19 before they could leave the park, the BBC reports. Authorities ordered the tests when a woman who had been at Shanghai Disney the previous day tested positive for the virus. Authorities say the woman was on her way home by train when she found out that she was a close contact of a confirmed COVID case, the Wall Street Journal reports. The woman left the train in Hangzhou, around 100 miles from Shanghai, where she tested positive Sunday.
Shanghai COVID control authorities say all 33,863 visitors and personnel tested negative before leaving Sunday, per the South China Morning Post. The AP reports that visitors were seen lining up to be tested by health workers in hazmat suits as Disney fireworks went off in the background. "I never thought that the longest queue in Disneyland would be for a nucleic acid test," quipped one visitor.
Shanghai Disney will now be closed until at least Wednesday. Authorities say everybody who went to the park over the weekend will be required to self-isolate and undergo several COVID tests over the next few days. With the Winter Olympics less than 100 days away, China is keeping up its "zero COVID" strategy, the AP notes. Last week, a train from Shanghai to Beijing was halted in Jinan, around halfway between the two cities, after authorities realized one passenger was a close contact of a COVID case. All 212 passengers and crew members were quarantined. (More China stories.)
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