Coronavirus: Chinese celebs, influencers open up about their Covid-19 experiences

As China’s official response to managing Covid-19 evolves, public attitudes towards the disease have begun to shift.

A few months ago, people diagnosed with Covid-19 lived under shadows of stigma, isolation and even unemployment. Few, if any, public figures would reveal they had been infected.

But as China moves away from harsh zero-Covid measures, the official rhetoric has stopped referring to the illness as something that needs to be contained.

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Suddenly, Covid-19 infections are being talked about by those who have had them, and celebrities, scientists, and influencers have jumped in to share their own experiences.

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On Thursday, singer and actress Kym Jin Sha revealed in a post on Weibo that she had been infected in June and shared her experience “in the hope it might help to you”.

She described the pain she felt in her throat like “being cut by a knife”, adding that her back ached so much that “it was hard to get to sleep at night without painkillers”.

She said she experienced brain fog and had to rely on traditional Chinese medicine to get enough sleep.

“[I] felt my mind went blank and I was easily stuck to find words when I was halfway through a sentence,” Jin said in her post.

Other celebrities have posted about less severe experiences and called on the public not to panic.

Actress Zhang Xinyi, wife of actor Yuan Hong who starred in the period drama Treading on Thin Ice, said her entire family had been infected, but recovered within nine days. She also urged people not to panic if they developed the condition.

Zhang said her three-year-old son was the second to show symptoms, but the first to test negative after the infection, so “parents do not need to worry too much about children”.

She urged people to drink lots of water and use fever medication if their temperature hit 39 degrees Celsius (102 Fahrenheit).

“In a word, no need to be nervous about this disease which improves after running its course,” Zhang wrote.

Richard Liu Qiangdong, CEO of online shopping platform JD.com, said his own experience with Covid-19 seemed to milder than all the “bad colds or seasonal flus” he had had before.

He said his 86-year-old mother, a diabetic, did not go to hospital when she became infected. Liu said she recovered at home after six days.

Zhang Lan, the founder of a popular chain of restaurants and former mother-in-law of Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu, also encouraged people to stay calm about Covid-19.

“Of course I ache all over my body but I still sit here to live-stream just to tell you, it’s no big deal,” Zhang said during one of her live-streaming sessions on Saturday.

People who are not as well known have also begun to share their Covid-19 experiences.

Lin Cui, a 37-year-old doctor at a Dalian hospital, who had worked on the front line of the battle against Covid-19 outbreaks in the city, said she was not afraid to discuss what happened.

“I used to get really worried when I was just a close contact, even a secondary one,” she said on social media. “I also panicked after I saw my first positive antigen test, but after video chatting with one of my closest friends in Beijing, who got infected and recovered, I was sort of relieved as well.”

She shared a photo of her positive antigen result and a video of the amusing reaction from her daughter when she found out her mother became infected.

Ai Shi, a regional manager of an online travel platform who was recovering from Covid-19, said her biggest concern had not been getting the virus, but the “policy” for treating Covid-19 patients.

“I was worried about being taken away to an isolation centre, because the living conditions there were really bad. I was also worried about being quarantined without knowing when we would be released,” she said.

“I have seen people saying on the internet that many quarantine regulators do not follow national policy, meaning the durations of quarantines vary significantly.”

More from South China Morning Post:

• Coronavirus: China pushes local health authorities to keep rural populations safe from wave of infection
• China’s relaxation of ‘zero-Covid’ controls comes at a crucial time for Hong Kong property

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