Beijing: When Zou tested positive for Covid-19 while working as a cleaner in one of Shanghai’s largest quarantine centres, she hoped it wouldn’t be long before she could pick up the mop and start earning again.
But four months on, she is still fighting to get her job back – one of scores of recovering Covid-19 patients facing what labour rights activists and health experts say is a widespread form of discrimination in zero-Covid China.
Using snap lockdowns and mass testing, China is the last major economy still pursuing the goal of stamping out the virus completely.
Those who test positive, as well as their contacts, are all sent to central quarantine facilities, while a flare-up in a factory can grind production to a halt.
Rights groups say the strict rules are feeding Covid-related discrimination and shutting out thousands of people from China’s already bleak job market.
“People are afraid they might contract the virus from us, so they shun us,” said Zou, who only gave her last name for fear of retribution.
China’s strict control measures have led to stigma against not just recovered patients, but also their families, neighbours, friends and even frontline healthcare workers, said Jin Dongyan from the School of Biomedical Sciences at Hong Kong University.
“It is unscientific to think that people who were infected once will continue to carry the virus and be infectious long after recovering,” Jin said.
Zou is now fighting a court battle with her employer, who has refused to pay her wages since she got sick, and who cites her disease history as a reason to bar her from returning to work.
He Yuxiu is a Chinese social media influencer who goes by a pseudonym and was living in Ukraine until Russia invaded.
She fled the war and returned home, then found a job as a Russian-language teacher in north China’s Hebei province, relieved to have left her troubles behind.
But when her school learned that she had been infected with Covid-19 while in Ukraine, she was fired.
“Why should we be treated like a virus when we have defeated it?” she said in a video posted on China’s Twitter-like Weibo.
The stigma is widespread – job ads for factory workers in Shanghai posted last month said applicants with a history of Covid-19 infection would be refused work.
Beijing’s National Health Commission and human resources ministry last month banned employers from discriminating against recovered Covid-19 patients, while Premier Li Keqiang has called for heavy punishments for those breaking the rules.
But job seekers and activists are sceptical.
“Some factories give different excuses despite being short of workers,” employment agent Wang Tao said.
Those who have tested positive are often referred to as “little sheep people” on Chinese social media. In Mandarin, the word for “positive” and “sheep” are pronounced the same way.
“It is very difficult for recovered patients to go back to our normal lives,” said Zou, the cleaner from Shanghai.
“No matter where we go, our infection history will follow us like a dark shadow.” — AFP
