Sprawled over land the size of 20 football fields, the
campus houses factories, living quarters for 40,000 workers, some living 12 per
room, and even a supermarket.
But as COVID-19 breached Quanta's defences, the system broke
down into chaos on Thursday.
Videos posted online showed more than a hundred Quanta
workers physically overwhelming security guards in hazmat suits and vaulting
over factory gates to escape being trapped inside the factory amid rumours that
workers on the floor that day tested positive for COVID.
The turmoil at Quanta underscores the struggles Shanghai
faces to get its factories, many of them key links in global supply chains,
back up to speed even as much of the city of 25 million remains locked down
under China's "dynamic-zero" COVID policy.
Taiwan-based Quanta puts together about three-quarters of
Apple's global MacBook production and also manufactures computer circuit boards
for Tesla.
Quanta did not respond to a request for comment on the
videos, which appeared on Chinese social media platforms before being taken
down. Apple declined to comment and Tesla did not respond to a request for
comment.
Quanta set up its closed-loop to restart work at the factory
on April 18 with about 5 percent of its workforce, or 2,000 employees, with
plans to triple that by April 22. Chinese state media touted the restart as an
example of how Shanghai was keeping business open in the country's biggest
economic hub, while adhering to stringent COVID measures.
Daily cases
But cases have been reported daily at an address belonging
to the campus from March 26 to May 4, according to Shanghai government data.
Quanta has not disclosed the number of cases among its workers.
Calls seeking help to bring attention to positive cases
which were not being isolated at Quanta began appearing on Weibo from April 6,
five days after Shanghai implemented a city-wide lockdown
More appeared throughout the month and employees began
posting photos and accounts on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, that
showed dozens of workers queuing for buses to be taken to central quarantine
facilities.
They also took videos of themselves resting in Shanghai's
National Exhibition and Convention Center, one of the city's largest quarantine
centres, as well as at a facility purpose-built to house Quanta workers.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the footage,
but two employees and a person with direct knowledge of the campus's operations
said there were multiple infections there.
"Each dormitory reported a few positive cases a day,
and eventually everyone became positive," said one of the two workers, who
gave his surname as Li, adding that there were eight cases in his room,
including him.
Employees said that cases were often not isolated for days
after testing positive and the person with direct knowledge of the campus's
operations said there were not enough isolation spaces, resulting in continued
infections.
That was a trigger for Thursday night's chaos, employees
said, as rumours spread that positive cases had been found among those working
in the factories.
The workers were spooked by an order telling them not to
return to their dormitories, raising fears that they could be locked down
inside the plant.
While the videos of the fray were taken down by this
weekend, discussion continued on Weibo and Douyin, with one user simply saying,
"What a mess". © Reuters