Getting COVID Twice: In the U.S. and China

At 9 a.m. today, my health code finally turned green! It’s been 35 days since December 20th, when I flew from the U.S. to Shanghai and then on to Guangzhou. On the 21st, just as I settled into the quarantine hotel in Shanghai, they informed us we were positive and needed to be isolated.

First, I was sent to Shanghai No. 5 People’s Hospital, where I was observed for four days. The first day’s PCR test was negative, the second day positive, the third day negative, and the fourth day positive again. Finally, I had to go to Shanghai’s centralized facility for positive cases—Jinshan Public Health Clinical Center, also known as Gongwei.

Moving from the observation room of the fever clinic at Shanghai No. 5 People’s Hospital to Gongwei felt like transitioning from a 1970s detention center to a modern prison.

I was placed in Room 204 at the No. 5 Hospital, a room of about 15 square meters. In the middle was a bed and a bedside table, plus a red plastic thermos flask—nothing else, just empty. There was a bathroom with a basic faucet over the sink, no hot water switch, and a simple pipe held high up that served as a shower hose without a showerhead. A note on the door said hot water would be available every few days at certain times, but I always missed the window and never got any hot water.

Even with the lights off day and night, I felt completely exposed, with no privacy. The door was locked from the outside, and the large glass window had no curtains. The hallway lights and the lights from the office building opposite blazed all night like searchlights. Apart from the nurse coming to do PCR tests and someone emptying the trash bags at the same time each day, I saw no one.

At mealtimes, someone would knock on the built-in cabinet in the back, place a meal box inside, close the outer door, and then I would open the inner door of the room, take it out, and eat. One day I found a patient registration card in the food, and after that I never had any appetite for the food here. The three meals never varied—breakfast was a large steamed bun, a container of porridge, and a small packet of pickled vegetables. Lunch and dinner were the same: a box with rice and one meat and one vegetable dish. It was a good thing I wasn’t there long, or even without being sick I would have developed malnutrition. Was this a patient’s meal? It felt more like food for someone on their deathbed, making me feel worse than a prisoner.

Was this really Shanghai? The Minhang Quanji Hotel where I’d stayed had also felt shabby. The wallpaper and cabinet linings were peeling and curling outward, and when I pulled out the bedside table, it was filthy inside. On overcast, gray days, the trees along the streets looked bare and gray. As I sat in the sealed ambulance heading to Jinshan Public Health Clinical Center, my mood was exactly that: gloomy and oppressive.

Jinshan District lies in the southwest of Shanghai, bordering Zhejiang, and some Shanghainese even consider it part of Zhejiang. Jinshan Public Health Center occupies a large area here, with buildings all of yellow-tiled roofs and white walls, laid out like a garden complex. The highest is three stories, scattered across many compounds, divided into COVID wards, tuberculosis wards, leprosy wards, AIDS wards, etc. Everything was quiet, and all wards were sealed off. I was in Building 1, Floor 3, Bed +3. When I arrived, there were 189 of us; ten days later, that number rose to 400, and Building 2 was opened. I heard the whole center had 500 beds, but to save manpower, they added an extra bed to each room, from two to three. It was understandably cramped, but compared to the No. 5 Hospital, it was paradise. Newly built, modernly decorated, with automatic foot-pedal doors, indoor negative-pressure environment, and 24-hour hot water supply—even washing your face was with hot water. Meal choices were 40, 60, or 100 yuan per day, with every meal including an egg and either milk or yogurt. Lunch and dinner came with fruit, and the dishes changed daily, but always included soy products, fish or meat, and vegetables. Every day I would throw away two eggs and a piece or two of fruit because I genuinely couldn’t eat it all.

Upon admission, everyone paid a deposit of 5,000 yuan. At checkout, if you had a domestic health insurance card, the deposit was fully refunded, meaning food, accommodation, and medication cost nothing. Foreign nationals, of course, paid as charged. A boy who was discharged with me that day had a bill of 6,800 yuan for ten days.

When I entered on December 24, there were already two young women in the room. One came from the U.S. on the same flight as me, arriving two days earlier, and had no symptoms. The other, from the U.K., had been there for over ten days and had a slight cough. I worried about getting infected a second time, but the nurse said the room had negative pressure, the airflow went upward rather than sideways, so cross-infection wouldn’t occur. Later, when they opened another building, both of them moved there. After that, two more arrived: one from Denmark and one from Australia. Both said they felt symptoms of Omicron, and this time I was a bit scared. The nurse reassured me, “Don’t worry, the doctors and specialists have assessed this arrangement; there won’t be cross-infection.” Thinking about it, every day people tested negative and were discharged. Look at me: I came in as a weak positive, tested negative on the same day, negative again at the hospital on day eight, and negative at the city’s CDC on day nine. I went through discharge procedures on day nine and was officially discharged on day ten. Later I learned that the two girls I first roomed with both stayed a full 30 days before leaving. This shows two things: first, sharing a room didn’t cause cross-infection, and second, the complete recovery cycle from COVID should be around 30 days.

The reason I could be discharged normally might be that I had been infected in the U.S. and hadn’t fully recovered, so I was only weakly positive. They, on the other hand, might have been newly infected. The girl from the U.S. didn’t develop cold symptoms until the eighth day, and with her period coming soon after, she ended up staying at Gongwei for a full 30 days. The girl from the U.K. always had symptoms and also stayed 30 days.

I recall that after I got COVID in the U.S., all five family members caught it. The baby took a full month to fully recover; my husband took 35 days; my son-in-law took even longer; my daughter’s case was somewhat shorter. After infection, we all self-treated at home with Lianhua Qingwen capsules, tracheitis pills, and Chinese herbs. For the first two days, the baby was given children’s cold medicine, but when we asked the doctor what to do, they said if there was no fever, there was nothing they could do—let him get better on his own. So it went on like that; by day 30, his mental state had fully returned to normal, so he must have recovered. At Gongwei, we took Chinese medicine daily and waited. Very few were discharged in ten days; generally it took 30 to 40 days.

No wonder the U.S. calls COVID a “big flu.” If you’re vaccinated, symptoms when infected are very mild—I had almost none. I had suddenly fallen asleep during a cold, and when I woke up I felt limited movement in my arm. Fearing a stroke, I went to the emergency room. The doctor diagnosed COVID, said there was no blood clot, and asked if I wanted an injection to prevent severe COVID. I felt completely fine, so I declined. I went home and took Chinese patent medicines and herbs for COVID, plus a decoction of astragalus, ginseng, and jujube to boost my energy. In about a week I was better. More than a month later, several tests came back negative.

We all believed that the Shanghai CDC’s testing standards were stricter than those in the U.S., which was why I tested negative in the U.S. but positive in China. Perhaps there really were residual viral traces in my body that couldn’t spread to others, and Shanghai, being cautious, wanted to detect absolutely no trace. Testing at Gongwei was extremely rigorous. On the day I arrived, they drew 13 tubes of venous blood, one tube of arterial blood, two urine and stool samples, plus nasal and throat swabs. Upon discharge, the same—nasal and throat swabs and a blood tube. The day before leaving the 14-day hotel quarantine, they did the same tests as at Gongwei, plus urine tests and environmental swabs, including my phone and pillow surface.

Summarizing my return journey: the second day after checking into the hotel I was notified of a positive COVID test. I was observed for four days at Shanghai No. 5 Hospital, spent ten days at Gongwei, then another 14 days in hotel quarantine, plus the first two days—30 days in total. After returning to Guangzhou, I had seven days of home quarantine, making 37 days in all, completely cut off from the outside world. If it weren’t for my phone and TV, I probably would have not only grown mold but also gone mad with depression. In fact, my roommates were all a bit anxious and desperate. We had returned to reunite with family and celebrate the New Year, but now we wouldn’t be out of the hotel until a few days after the Lunar New Year.

It suddenly struck me how truly free it was in the U.S. If you tested positive for COVID, unless you were severely ill, they basically gave no treatment and no medication, just sent you home to do as you pleased—except that the CDC would call and tell my son-in-law that since everyone in the household was a patient or close contact, they must quarantine at home for 21 days and report their health status daily.

I was free, but all five of us got infected. My daughter complained a lot, saying we brought COVID to them, especially to the baby not yet one year old. She said if it were like China, where you get tested and quarantined upon entry, they and the baby wouldn’t have gotten sick. I was speechless too. Did I want this? If it weren’t for helping care for the baby, would I have caught COVID in China? In China, even if you caught COVID, you’d receive treatment, and it would be free. In the U.S., not only did they not treat you, but that emergency room visit cost over ten thousand dollars for me, and over twenty thousand for the two of us—about 140,000 yuan. Could I afford to be sick? Though, my daughter had bought us both six-month insurance for 1,000 dollars each. According to the plan, after a 250-dollar deductible, insurance would cover everything. But in the end, we each paid 500 dollars, totaling 1,000 dollars. My daughter’s family had insurance through my son-in-law’s employer, with a family plan that started at 10,000 dollars per year; once you exceeded that, all costs were covered. If you didn’t spend 10,000 dollars that year, the remaining amount rolled over into next year’s account for future medical expenses. Is 10,000 dollars a lot? One night, the baby cried all night because his diaper wasn’t changed. My daughter and son-in-law, afraid he had eaten something dirty off the floor and had a stomachache, took him to the children’s hospital for an ultrasound. It turned out his bottom was red, they applied some cream, and the final bill was 1,500 dollars. Then they had to buy a prescription moisturizing cream at a nearby pharmacy out of pocket. In other words, medicine for home use you have to buy separately; whether it’s covered by insurance depends on the contract. So getting COVID in the U.S. isn’t really scary. If you’re vaccinated, infection is mostly mild, and symptoms disappear after a few days at home. Or within ten days of infection, you could get an injection to prevent severe illness, and it wouldn’t progress. The problem is, an emergency room visit costs around ten thousand dollars. Who has that money? Who can afford such high-level insurance? So that’s probably why the COVID death rate in the U.S. is high: some refuse to get vaccinated, and some who catch COVID can’t afford treatment.

Zhong Nanshan said that China has already completed over 80% vaccination and developed a specific medicine; if the fatality rate can be controlled within 0.01%, the country can open up without the zero-COVID policy. Yes, another reason China can open up is that patients can receive free treatment. The U.S. opened up and has the conditions to do so: vaccines and specific medicine, but no universal healthcare or free COVID medical care!

Written in Guangzhou, Jan. 17 – Feb. 5, 2022