Morning
This year’s National Day break turned out to be unexpectedly long. Twenty-three days off, almost a full month — not for me, of course, but for the two kids. Because of the local outbreak that started around the National Day holiday, they had been stuck at home the whole time, doing daily nucleic acid tests and online classes.
After all that waiting, the city finally began to reopen. Today was supposed to be their first day back at kindergarten. I had barely dropped them off at the school gate when, less than five minutes later, the teacher sent a message: a nearby hospital’s fever clinic had reported an abnormal test result. The subdistrict office moved fast, putting up cordons around the hospital and the residential compound where the person lived. Some schools immediately told parents to come and take their children home.
My children were still inside, having class. And they had only done a nucleic acid test yesterday.
Honestly, it was exhausting. The residential compound linked to the abnormal test result sits right across from the place where I work. More than a dozen buildings in that compound had already been sealed off with warning tape.
Afternoon
By the afternoon, the official itinerary of the confirmed positive case was released. The person had spent two or three hours on the snack street near my home — sealed. Longteng Market, across from the confirmed case’s compound — sealed too.
The real headache was that I had gone to that market to buy groceries several times over those few days. Fortunately, I had just missed the person’s market visit the previous day. During that same time slot, I had gone to another small supermarket instead. A perfect dodge, or so I thought.
I checked my Yuekang health code twice in the afternoon, and both times it was still green. But around five o’clock, when I scanned in at another place, it suddenly showed yellow.
Even though I had avoided the confirmed case’s exact grocery-shopping window, I was still assigned a yellow code. My boss had also been to the same market a few days earlier, so his code turned yellow as well. Instead of going home, the two of us had dinner and then went to the yellow-code testing lane at a nearby park for a nucleic acid test. I figured it would probably turn green again in two or three hours.
I had originally planned to pack a couple of pieces of clothing and sleep on the floor at the shop for the night. But when I opened my phone, the Yuekang code had already returned to green.
In the morning, the planned control area looked fairly large, so I carried over some rice and vegetables just in case there would be nothing to eat. By the afternoon, it was confirmed that only the residential compound, the meat and vegetable market opposite it, and the snack street across from my home had been sealed.
The education bureau has just issued a notice: nearby schools will suspend students’ return to campus for the next two days.