China braces for wave of workers fleeing iPhone factory in Covid-hit Zhengzhou

Videos shared on Chinese social media showed people who are allegedly workers at the Foxconn plant climbing over fences and carrying their belongings along a road. It was previously reported that a number of workers had been placed under quarantine because of an outbreak of the disease.

Foxconn, a supplier to Apple that is headquartered in Taiwan, has about 200,000 workers at the Zhengzhou complex. It has not disclosed the number of infected workers, nor the number who have left, but said on Sunday that it would not stop them from departing.

Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, reported 167 locally transmitted Covid cases in the seven days to 29 October, up from 97 infections in the previous seven-day period.

Late on Saturday, nearby cities including Yuzhou, Changge and Qinyang urged Foxconn workers to report to local authorities before going home.

Photographs and videos circulating on Chinese social media since Saturday appeared to show Foxconn workers returning home, trekking across fields in the day and along roads at night.

Volunteers from nearby villages put out food and drinks for the Foxconn workers. One such volunteer, who asked to be identified only as Zhang out of privacy concerns, was put in charge of distributing supplies that his village in Xingyang county had prepared.

He said the people shown in a video he uploaded to the platform Douyin were Foxconn workers because they would have had to take that road if they were leaving the facility.

Shanghai Disneyland said on Saturday it would operate at reduced capacity. On Wednesday, Universal Beijing Resort was suspended after the visit of an infected individual.

Apple did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the Foxconn situation.