Getting COVID Twice in the US and China

At 9 a.m. this morning, my health code finally turned green!

It's been 35 days since I left the US on December 20, flew to Shanghai, and then connected to Guangzhou. On the 21st, just as I got settled in the quarantine hotel in Shanghai, I was told we were positive and had to isolate. First, I was sent to Shanghai Fifth People’s Hospital, where I was observed for four days. The first day my nucleic acid test was negative; the second day, positive; the third, negative again; and the fourth, positive once more. Finally, I had to go to Shanghai's centralized site for positive cases — the Jinshan Public Health Clinical Center, or “Gongwei” for short.

Moving from the observation room in the fever clinic at Shanghai Fifth People’s Hospital to Jinshan Public Health Center felt like being transferred from a 1970s detention cell to a modern prison.

I was assigned to Room 204 at Fifth Hospital. It was about 15 square meters, with a bed, a nightstand, and a red plastic thermos — nothing else, just empty space. There was a bathroom with a sink and a basic faucet — no hot-water tap — and a pipe held up high that served as a shower hose without a showerhead. On the door was a note explaining when hot water would be available, but I kept missing the schedule and never got any. Day and night, I’d turn off the lights in the room, yet I still felt completely exposed, with zero privacy. The door was locked from the outside, the large glass window had no curtain, and the hallway lights and those from the office building opposite blazed all night like searchlights. Every day, aside from a nurse coming to do a swab and someone collecting the trash at the same time, there was not a soul in sight. At mealtimes, someone would knock on a hatch in the back wall, place a meal box inside, and shut the outer door; I’d then open the inside door, take it out, and eat. One day, I found a bed registration card in the food and totally lost my appetite for anything they served. The three meals a day never varied: breakfast was a big steamed bun, a box of congee, and a tiny pack of pickled vegetables; lunch and dinner were the same — a lunch box with rice and one meat and one vegetable dish. I was lucky I didn't stay long, because otherwise I'd have been malnourished without even being sick. Was this a patient meal? It felt more like a meal for someone on their last legs. It made me feel worse than an inmate.

Was this really Shanghai? The Minhang Ji Hotel, where I’d stayed, also felt shabby — wallpaper and cabinet veneers were peeling and curling outward. When I pulled out the nightstand drawer, it was filthy inside. In the smoggy, gray weather, the street trees looked bare and gloomy. My mood was just the same — gray and oppressed — when I rode in a sealed ambulance on the way to the Jinshan Public Health Clinical Center.

Jinshan District lies in the southwest corner of Shanghai, right on the border with Zhejiang province — some Shanghai locals even consider it part of Zhejiang. The Jinshan Public Health Center occupies a huge area, with clusters of garden-style buildings under yellow-tiled roofs and white walls, most of them three stories tall. It is divided into multiple zones for COVID, tuberculosis, leprosy, HIV/AIDS, and so on. Everywhere was dead quiet, and all wards were sealed off. My area was the third floor of Building 1, Bed +3. When I first arrived, there were 189 of us; ten days later, the number had swelled to 400, and Building 2 was opened up. I heard the whole facility had 500 beds, but to save on manpower, they squeezed an extra bed into each room — from two to three. It was cramped, sure, but compared to Fifth Hospital, it was heaven. The buildings were fairly new, with modern finishes, foot-operated automatic doors, negative air pressure inside, and hot water available 24/7 — even the sink had hot water. For meals, you could choose 40-, 60-, or 100-yuan a day, and every meal came with an egg and either milk or yogurt. Lunch and dinner always had fruit, and the dishes rotated daily while ensuring you got soy products, fish, and vegetables. I ended up throwing away two eggs and a piece or two of fruit every day — I just couldn’t finish it all. On admission, everyone had to pay a deposit of 5,000 yuan. When you checked out, if you had a domestic health insurance card, the deposit was fully refunded, meaning food, lodging, and medication cost nothing. Of course, as a foreigner, I paid the full amount. A young man who left the same day as me spent 6,800 yuan for ten days.

When I arrived on December 24, there were already two young women in the room — one from the US who’d been on the same flight as me, admitted two days earlier with no symptoms. The other was from the UK, already ten days in, and had a bit of a cough. I worried about a second infection, but the nurse explained that the room had negative pressure, so air flowed upward and didn’t move laterally — no cross-infection would happen. Later, when they opened the other building, both women were moved there. Then two new roommates arrived, one from Denmark and one from Australia, both saying they felt Omicron symptoms. This time I was genuinely scared, but the nurse reassured me: “Don’t worry, the doctors and experts have assessed all of this, and there’s no cross-infection.” Thinking it over, she had a point — people were testing negative and leaving every day. Me, I was admitted as a weak positive, tested negative that very same day, and on the eighth day the center’s test came back negative. On the ninth day, the city CDC also reported a negative result, so I completed my discharge paperwork and officially left on the tenth day. Later I found out the two women I’d first shared a room with both had to stay a full 30 days before getting out. That suggests two things: first, sharing a room didn’t cause cross-infection; second, the full recovery course for COVID should be around 30 days. I was able to leave on schedule probably because I’d already been infected in the US and hadn’t fully cleared it yet, so I was only a weak positive. They, on the other hand, may have had recent infections. The woman from the US didn’t develop cold-like symptoms until the eighth day, and then her period began, so she ended up spending a full 30 days at Jinshan. The one from the UK had symptoms the whole time and also stayed 30 days.

I remember when I got COVID in the US, all five members of our household came down with it. My baby grandson took a full month to recover, my husband took 35 days, my son-in-law even longer, and my daughter a bit less. After we were infected, we all self-medicated at home with Lianhua Qingwen capsules, tracheitis pills, and traditional Chinese herbal medicine. For the first two days, we gave the baby some children’s cold medicine, but when we called the doctor, they said: “If there’s no fever, there’s nothing we can do — just let him get over it on his own.” So that’s what we did until, after 30 days, the baby’s energy returned completely to normal. He must have gotten better. At Jinshan, other than taking Chinese herbal medicine every day, we just waited it out. Very few people left in 10 days; typically, it took 30 to 40 days.

No wonder the US treats COVID like a bad flu. If you’ve been vaccinated and get infected, the symptoms are very mild — I barely had any. The only reason I even went to the ER was that I suddenly fell asleep while feeling like I had a cold, and when I woke up, my arm felt sluggish. Fearing a stroke, I got checked out. The doctor diagnosed COVID without any blood clots and asked if I wanted a shot to prevent severe illness. I felt fine and declined, went home, took Chinese patent medicines and herbs, and also drank a tonic of astragalus, ginseng, and jujube to boost my energy. About a week later, I was better. More than a month afterward, I tested negative several times. We all felt that Shanghai CDC’s testing standards were stricter than those in the US — that’s why I tested negative in the US but positive in China. Or maybe I still had residual viral particles that weren’t contagious, but Shanghai, being extra cautious, wanted to make sure there was absolutely no virus left. Testing at Jinshan was extremely rigorous. The day I arrived, they drew 13 tubes of venous blood, one arterial blood sample, two urine and stool samples, plus nasal and throat swabs. The discharge tests included swabs of both nostrils and throat, and one blood draw. The day before I was released from the hotel after 14 days, they did the same full round of tests as at Jinshan, plus a urine test and environmental swabs — including my phone’s surface and my pillowcase.

So tallying up my return journey experience: the day after checking into the hotel, I was told I was COVID positive. I spent four days under observation at Shanghai Fifth Hospital, ten days at Jinshan Public Health Center, then another 14 days of hotel quarantine, plus the first two days — a full 30 days. Then back in Guangzhou, another seven days of home quarantine, making 37 days total of complete isolation from the world. If it hadn’t been for my phone and TV, I’d probably have grown moldy and gone mad with depression. In fact, my roommates all grew restless and despairing — they’d come back to reunite with family and spend Chinese New Year together, but instead, they wouldn’t be out of the hotel until well after the holiday.

It suddenly hit me just how free it had been in the US. If you tested positive for COVID, unless you were severely ill — or maybe they’d give you a shot to prevent severe disease — basically there was no treatment and no medication. You just went home, and you could do whatever you wanted. Only the US CDC would call; they spoke with my son-in-law and said that since you’re all infected or close contacts, you must isolate at home for 21 days and report your health status daily.

Yes, I was free, but all five of us got infected. My daughter blamed us a lot for bringing COVID to them, especially to her baby, who was less than a year old. She said if it were like China — testing and quarantine upon entry — they and the baby wouldn’t have gotten sick. I had nothing to say. Did I want it to happen? If it weren’t for coming to help care for the baby, would I have ever caught COVID in China? In China, even if you get COVID, you receive treatment, and it doesn’t cost a thing. In the US, not only is there no treatment, but that one ER visit cost over ten thousand dollars — more than 20,000 for two of us, equivalent to around 140,000 yuan. Could I afford to be that sick? Still, my daughter and her husband had each paid $1,000 for six-month insurance policies for us. The contract said after a $250 deductible, the insurance would cover everything, but when all was said and done, we each still ended up paying $500 out of pocket, totaling $1,000. My daughter’s family was on her husband’s company-designated plan, meaning the family’s yearly premium started at $10,000, and costs above that were fully covered. If you didn’t spend $10,000 that year, the remaining balance rolled over into the next year’s account to pay future medical bills. Whether $10,000 is a lot or not, one time the baby cried all night because we forgot to change his diaper, and they were afraid he’d eaten something off the floor and had a stomach ache, so they took him to a children’s hospital for an ultrasound. It turned out his bottom was red from diaper rash, and they applied a cream. The final bill was $1,500. Then they had to buy the doctor-prescribed ointment from a nearby pharmacy at their own expense — which may or may not be covered by insurance depending on the policy. So getting COVID in the US isn’t necessarily terrifying. If you’re vaccinated, you’ll likely only get a mild case, stay home a few days, and the symptoms will disappear, or you can go to a hospital within ten days for a shot to prevent severe illness, and it won’t progress to a critical stage. The problem is, one visit to the ER costs roughly $10,000. Who has that kind of money? Who can afford such high-end insurance? This is probably why COVID mortality is high in the US: some people refuse to get vaccinated, and others simply can’t afford treatment if they fall sick.

Zhong Nanshan says China has now vaccinated over 80% of its population and has developed effective drugs. If the mortality rate can be kept within 0.01%, the country could open up and abandon the zero-COVID policy. Yes, another reason China could open up is that patients can receive free treatment. The US opened up too, and it had the conditions — vaccines and effective drugs — but it lacks universal healthcare and free COVID care!

Written in Guangzhou, January 17 – February 5, 2022