With quarantine looming after a positive COVID-19 test, Shanghai resident Sarah Wang said that her first worry was who would look after her cat.
China’s pursuit of “zero COVID-19” means anyone who catches the virus is sent to central facilities, sometimes for weeks, leaving their pets at the mercy of local authorities.
Aside from fears the animals would be unfed or abandoned, a video showing a health worker in Shanghai bludgeoning a corgi dog to death this month caused uproar among residents — with some taking matters into their own hands.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The video created “pure panic,” said Erin Leigh, the main organizer of an emergency rescue service that has been formed to help pets who could otherwise become casualties of the hardline approach to the virus.
In the past few weeks, Leigh, 33, has expanded her group from a pet-sitting firm to a network of thousands of unpaid volunteers.
The group has found Wang’s fortunate feline a temporary home with a sitter across town.
The relieved financial worker said that her cat “wouldn’t have survived my apartment being disinfected.”
“Her conditions would have been pretty bleak without anyone coming to feed her,” the 28-year-old said.
“For some pets in the city, it comes down to life or death,” said Leigh, adding that owners felt “helpless.”
Across China, local governments’ urgency to stamp out every virus case has pushed animal well-being down the list of authorities’ priorities. In January, Hong Kong culled about 2,000 hamsters after one tested positive for COVID-19, and at least three cats and a dog were among animals killed by health workers in mainland China last year.
After the video of the corgi killing, Leigh said that she has been inundated with pleas from owners “desperate to get their animals saved.”
“People are like: ‘Get my dog to safety. I don’t even want it in my house,’” she said.
Pet ownership in China has ballooned, particularly in cosmopolitan hubs such as Shanghai.
The financial center has been at the heart of China’s worst COVID-19 outbreak since the peak of the first virus wave in Wuhan more than two years ago, and has been under a patchwork of lockdown restrictions since last month which have left most of its 25 million residents confined to their homes.
As Shanghai officials ramped up control measures, Leigh and others mobilized online to share information about the pets left behind when people were taken into centralized quarantine.
A handful of administrators work day and night to record cases of distressed animals, classifying them by location and noting those that most urgently need food, shelter or other care.
The network then raises the alarm on social media, sharing “help needed” posters in both Chinese and English until a savior is found.
They also connect owners and sitters with homebound vets “so they can all help each other in case there are any medical emergencies,” said volunteer Joey Ang, a 20-year-old student from Singapore.
The team has aided hundreds of cats and dogs — plus a few birds, fish and snakes.
Evacuated pets must be steered through the often-baffling lockdown restrictions, sometimes traveling hours to reach short-term homes just a few streets away.
However, the road to freedom is rarely smooth in a city where officials sweat over the potential consequences of bending vaguely defined lockdown rules.
Security guards often get jittery about carrying disinfected crates containing animals into and out of housing compounds, while drivers have jacked up fees for ferrying pets, volunteers said.
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
Counting was under way in Nepal yesterday, after a high-stakes parliamentary election to reshape the country’s leadership following protests last year that toppled the government. Key figures vying for power include former Nepalese prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli, rapper-turned-mayor Balendra Shah, who is bidding for the youth vote, and newly elected Nepali Congress party leader Gagan Thapa. In Kathmandu’s tea shops and city squares, people were glued to their phones, checking results as early trends flashed up — suggesting Shah’s centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) was ahead. Nepalese Election Commission spokesman Prakash Nyupane said the counting was ongoing “in a peaceful manner”
RSS