Volunteers in show of solidarity
Local residents, expats lend a helping hand as Shanghai battles a surge in COVID-19 infections
More than 46,000 Shanghai residents, including expats, have volunteered in the city’s ongoing fight against the latest COVID-19 outbreak which started at the beginning of March.
According to the authorities, as part of efforts to stem the surge in infections, the city conducted more than 30 million nucleic acid tests from March 16 to 20 during the gridscreening process. Tests are still ongoing on in some grids.
The number of new COVID-19 infections continued to rise in Shanghai over recent days. The city reported 981 and 983 new infections on March 22 and 23, respectively
In some neighborhoods that have a large population of foreigners, expats have been working as volunteers to help explain the grid-screening process to their peers and maintain order at testing sites.
Among these foreign volunteers is Habib Ur Rehman, an expat from Pakistan, who has been volunteering at a compound in the Hongqiao subdistrict within Changning district.
Habib, who can speak Mandarin and English, said he helps to explain the process to fellow foreigners and shows them how to retrieve the necessary QR codes for the tests. He hopes his efforts would help the testing process go more smoothly.
“For more than two years, I’ve witnessed the dedication and strength of the frontline medical workers and felt the warmth in Shanghai. I felt I must do something to repay the city and help it through this challenging period,” he said.
This is not the first time Habib has volunteered in Shanghai. He had previously worked as a volunteer for the police, helping spot traffic violations, raising awareness about phone frauds, and reminding people not to
set off fireworks during Spring Festival.
Changning police said that roughly one-fourth of the 80,000 residents in the Hongqiao area are expats.
Some police officers who are able to speak English and Japanese have also joined the volunteer contingent to help facilitate the grid-screening process. Among them is Fei Chenyue, who majored in Japanese when she was in college.
Eva Serrano, president of Inditex China, a fashion retailer, has also been volunteering at a residential neighborhood in Jing’an district. Her main task has been to help the expat residents get their QR codes ready before the test.
“The entire society shoulders the responsibility of epidemic prevention and control. When I saw that the medical professionals were working day and night, I also wanted to make some contribution in one way or another,” said Serrano, who registered herself as well as her eight colleagues after learning that the neighborhood was recruiting grid-testing volunteers.
Zhang Haiyan, head of the Siming residential neighborhood in the district, said that many of the volunteers had taken the initiative to contact neighborhood officials.
“A total of 85 residents volunteered to join the volunteer contingent within a day. They all told us that they wanted to lend a helping hand so that we can win the battle against the virus’ spread. This moved us deeply,” she said.
Despite the inconvenience brought to their daily lives, many expats have voiced their support for the temporary residential compound lockdowns.
“I think the announcements by the local government and neighborhoods have been good. Everything is wellorganized,” Sebastian Wiendieck, a resident from Germany, was quoted as saying by International Channel Shanghai.
Another foreigner, Brazilian Fabio Pinto Cesar, said that he understands the different approach that China has taken to combat the pandemic, and that this approach has allowed him to feel safe.
Since March 3, nearly 1,950 epidemic control tasks have been published via official channels, said Zheng Yinghao, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Civilization Office.
The tasks include measuring temperatures and checking health QR codes when entering public venues, helping organize nucleic acid testing in neighborhoods, and transporting supplies.
According to the office, volunteers have each worked an average of more than 11 hours in their respective roles.
Zheng noted that more volunteers will be dispatched to communities still under closed-loop management and that the office will beef up pre-job training for these volunteers.
“We’ll also need more volunteers for psychological counseling, health knowledge communication, refuting rumors, and foreign language translation,” he added.
Hu Zhuomin, who is able to speak eight languages, has been helping out in his neighborhood in Hongkou district’s Jiaxing subdistrict since earlier March.
His tasks include explaining the epidemic-prevention policy to expat residents, helping them register for nucleic acid tests, and answering their queries about community health management.
The 28-year-old, who studied at the Shanghai Foreign Language School Affiliated to Shanghai International Studies University before going to Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Monash University in Australia, was among the first batch of volunteers in his residential community, which is home to many expat families.
After learning that many residents, including expats, were eager to receive accurate and timely information about the pandemic situation, Hu and a bunch of other volunteers designed a system to ensure that such information was disseminated in different languages.
In addition to using online tools, Hu, who works with the Hongkou District Archives Administration, also joined the neighborhood committee to help explain the policy and measures to expat families.