It does not matter if you’re old or young, shrimp or fish – you can’t escape China’s zero-covid policy.
In the Jimei district of the coastal city of Xiamen, some fish and shrimp also had to do a nucleic acid test this week, leading to some banter on Chinese social media.
In the area, fishermen returning from a day of work have to undergo nucleic acid tests together with some of the fish that they caught during the day.
After the fishermen themselves have done the Covid test, they reportedly have to grab a few fresh fish from their catch of the day for the anti-epidemic workers to test. They open the mouth of the fish so that the fish can be tested with the cotton swab.
Chinese media outlet Sohu (搜狐新闻) posted a video about the issue on its Weibo account on August 17th, receiving over 90,000 likes and more than 8000 shares.
Catch of the day! It doesn't matter if you're young or old, fish or crab – can't escape China's zero-covid policy and the nucleic acid tests. pic.twitter.com/stoqsGyYf1
— Manya Koetse (@manyapan) August 17, 2022
“I thought fish didn’t any lungs?” a popular comment said, with other commenters suggesting that this news made it clear that Covid “doesn’t affect the lungs but the brain instead.”
Another commenter suggested that if this matter concerned authorities, they should also start testing mosquitos.
Some also felt bad for the fish: “They still have to undergo this before getting killed.”
“The fish should be grateful for receiving a Covid test for free,” others wrote, while there were also people who wondered if parts of the sea would go into lockdown mode if some fish would test positive for Covid.
There were also critical commenters wondering about any scientific reasoning behind testing fish, asking who was getting paid to test them – suggesting commercial benefits outweigh scientific basis in this case.
“You can’t get Covid if you don’t have lungs, let alone if you live in the sea,” one Weibo user wrote, another person asking: “Have we all gone mad?”
By Manya Koetse
With contributions by Miranda Barnes
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