By Brenda Goh and Albee Zhang
SHANGHAI, Oct 31 (Reuters) – The Shanghai Disney resort abruptly suspended operations on Monday to comply with COVID-19 prevention measures, with all visitors, at the time of the announcement, invited to stay in the park until they are negative virus test results.
The resort said at 11:39 am local time (0339 GMT) that it would immediately close the main theme park and surrounding areas, including its shopping street, until further notice to comply with virus restrictions.
The Shanghai government said in its official WeChat account that the park prohibited people from entering and exiting and that all visitors within the complex would have to wait for test results before they could leave.
Anyone who has visited the park since Oct. 27 will need to be tested for COVID-19 three times in three days, he said.
Neither the Shanghai government nor the Disney resort have provided further details. On Saturday, the complex said it had started operations with reduced staff to comply with COVID measures.
The theme park continued to run attractions for visitors stuck in the park during Monday’s lockdown, social media users reported.
Shanghai reported 10 locally transmitted cases as of October 30, all of them referring to people without symptoms.
The lockdown marks the latest outage for the Shanghai Disney Resort, which was closed for more than three months during the Shanghai lockdown earlier this year.
The park was also closed for two days in November last year, with over 30,000 visitors trapped inside, after authorities ordered that all be tested in a contact-tracing exercise.
Videos that circulated on the Chinese Weibo platform on Monday showed people running towards the park gates, which were already closed.
Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the videos, and the Shanghai Disney Resort did not immediately respond to a request for further comment on the number of guests inside.
Local authorities across China continued to impose abrupt and extreme measures to rule out any possibility of transmission of the virus once cases occur, in line with the country’s ultra-strict zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19.
The Universal Resort in Beijing, the country’s capital, reopened on Monday after five days of confinement, also motivated by measures against the virus.
(Reporting by Albee Zhang and Brenda Goh; Spanish editing by Flora Gómez)
