Covid: China blocks off world's largest iPhone factory

China has ordered a seven-day blockade of the area surrounding the world's largest iPhone factory: the Foxconn Technology Group plant in Zhengzhou. Chinese authorities announced a lockdown until Nov. 9 in Zhengzhou, an industrial city home to Foxconn, the company to which Apple outsources the manufacture of many products including iPhones.

The local government instituted what they call "static management" in response to a suspected coronavirus outbreak as part of China's zero-Covid strategy. This means total confinement which prevents people and vehicles from going outside, except for medical or other essential reasons. In practice, the ban threatens to cut off the flow of additional workers and components needed to keep up production at the world's largest iPhone factory.

The Foxconn plant manufactures approximately 80% of Apple's latest phones. The Taiwanese company was already battling a Covid outbreak that forced many of its 200,000 employees into quarantine and caused hundreds to flee the facility for fear of radical confinements. Some of them walked up to 25 miles to escape from the area.

The more than 600,000 residents of the confined area will have to undergo daily Covid testing, the local government said, warning that it will "resolutely crack down on all kinds of violations." The Chinese regime is one of the harshest in its anti-Covid policies, which it often uses as tools for surveillance and population control.

On the other hand, China's Covid restrictions forced the company to close the Disney Resort in Shanghai. The resort suddenly suspended operations on Monday to comply with coronavirus prevention measures, and all visitors had to remain indoors until a negative test was obtained.