(Beijing) Catching COVID-19, recovering from it and, months later, still being considered an outcast: this is what happened to Mme Zuo, a housekeeper struggling to find a job, an increasingly common form of discrimination in China.
Posted at 10:02
When she tested positive while working on the cleaning crew at a quarantine center in Shanghai, the woman, who only gives her last name, thought it would just be a bad time to have.
Four months later, she is fighting to be able to work again.
“People are afraid of catching the virus from our contact, so they avoid us,” she sighs.
Difficult to hide the truth during a job interview: “Recruiters check the history of COVID-19 tests dating back several months during an interview”.
Like her, other former patients suffer this discrimination when they are fully recovered, worry about labor rights defenders, stressing that the first victims are migrants from the countryside and young people.
China is the last major economy on the planet to pursue a strict zero COVID-19 policy, with regular large-scale testing and lockdowns of neighborhoods or even entire cities.
Those who test positive and their contacts are systematically sent to quarantine centres.
Food for paranoia: Some former COVID-19 patients — but also their families, neighbors and friends — are stigmatized, says Jin Dongyan, professor at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Biomedical Sciences . Even front-line caregivers are viewed with suspicion.
“Ignorance makes some fear that people who have been infected are more likely to be re-infected, but in reality it is the opposite,” he says.
“Like a virus”
Mme Zuo has embarked on a legal battle against her employer, who refuses to pay her salary since she fell ill and to return her job.
Contacted by AFP, the latter declined to comment.
He Yuxiu experienced the same mishap: this social media influencer, who speaks under a pseudonym, was in Ukraine when the war broke out. She returned to China where she started working as a Russian teacher in Hebei province.
When the school learned she had COVID-19 in Ukraine, she was expelled.
“I never thought I would lose my first job because of this,” she said in a video posted on Weibo, China’s Twitter. But “why should we be treated like a virus, when precisely we have defeated it? “.
Elsewhere in the country, other cases of discrimination have been reported: Last month, job advertisements from factories in Shanghai clearly specified that anyone who had already had COVID-19 would not be hired.
Also in Shanghai, the story of a young woman who lived for several weeks in the toilets of Hongqiao station went viral: recently recovered from COVID-19, she could neither find a job nor return to live in her village. .
In Foshan, a theater had to apologize after a scandal sparked a poster barring entry to those who had ever caught the virus.
“Little Sheep”
In July, Chinese authorities issued a circular prohibiting discrimination against recovered COVID-19 patients, with Premier Li Keqiang calling for tough penalties for violations.
But in Shanghai, even after the city’s announcement of strict anti-discrimination rules, factories have not changed their practices, denounces Wang Tao, an agent who connects factories with migrant workers from the countryside.
“Some give different excuses (for not hiring) while they lack workers, but everyone who gets rejected has been positive in the past.”
AFP contacted eight companies cited by state media for discriminatory practices – including iPhone maker Foxconn. None wished to speak.
“It’s very hard for workers to protect their rights, because […] it is difficult to prove that (employers) are violating the labor law,” said Aidan Chau, a researcher at the rights group China Labor Bulletin.
“It is important that the unions step up to the plate. But many small and medium-sized businesses don’t have one”.
Those declared positive are nicknamed “the little sheep” on Chinese social networks, because in Mandarin, the words “positive” and “sheep” are pronounced the same.
Mme Zuo, she would just like to turn the page: “It’s really complicated for recovered patients to return to a normal life. Wherever we go, our infection history will follow us like a dark cloud.”