- Bankers and traders are living in their offices in
Shanghai amid the city's strict COVID-19 lockdown, Reuters reported. - Some offices in Lujiazui district —
China 's Wall Street — preppped sleeping bags and toiletries for workers to stay overnight.
More than 20,000 bankers and traders in Shanghai, China, are living in their offices to ensure smooth business operations amid the city's strict COVID-19 lockdown, Reuters reported.
Some offices in the financial district of Lujiazui, also known as China's Wall Street, have prepared items such as sleeping bags and toiletries for employees to camp out overnight, the outlet said.
For one hedge fund manager named Henry, living in the office means sharing a bathroom with 20 people and having no access to showers, Bloomberg reported. When the neon signs from neighboring skyscrapers got too bright, some workers tried to seek help from friends working in those buildings to get them turned off, he told the outlet.
According to CNN, some traders and fund managers have even been offered daily allowances of between 500 and 2,000 yuan ($78 to $314) per night to stay overnight at their offices.
Many workers have reportedly been living at work from at least Monday, which is when Pudong – the half of the city that sits to the east of the Huangpu River — first went into lockdown. Shanghai, a financial hub of 26 million, has been divided into two parts to allow for mass testing, with residents on both sides of the river experiencing different phases of a strict lockdown.
Restrictions were meant to be lifted in Pudong on Friday but have just been extended another 10 days. That means that employees in the financial district may have to live in their cubicles for longer than expected.
For some workers, living at work began even before the current lockdown was implemented.
In a video shared on social media last week by state-run web portal China Internet Information Centre, workers at an unidentified Shanghai office can be seen sleeping on air mattresses or sleeping bags in between their cubicles. One worker was seen sleeping on two rows of chairs.
A man in the video said that any colleagues who snored were sent to the meeting room to sleep. He added that there were no shower facilities, so workers had to boil water to wash up.
According to the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, Shanghai recorded 4,144 asymptomatic cases and 358 symptomatic COVID-19 cases on Thursday.