General Motors told Shanghai workers to sleep on factory floors to keep up production during the city’s new lockdown, report says

• Shanghai locked down parts of the city this week to battle a rise in COVID-19 cases.

• General Motors is asking workers to sleep on its factory floors in Shanghai, Reuters reported.

• City authorities told companies to place workers in bubbles so they can keep working, Reuters said.

General Motors is asking workers to sleep on the floors of its Shanghai factories to keep production going during the city’s new COVID-19 lockdown, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.

China, which has pursued a zero-COVID strategy throughout the pandemic, is battling several new outbreaks of COVID-19.

The city of Shanghai said Sunday it was locking down half of the city from Monday to Friday while it launched a mass COVID-19 testing drive. The other half of the city is to be locked down for the same period starting April 1.

While the lockdowns last, China has told companies based in the zone to enforce a “closed-loop” arrangements, whereby workers live and work in a bubble away from the public, Reuters said.

To accommodate this, GM asked workers to sleep on the factory floor and secured “passes” for its truck drivers, the agency said.

GM did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

The GM factories are run in partnership with China’s SAIC Motor Corp and produce Buick, Chevrolet, and Cadillac vehicles.

While GM is aiming to keep up production, Tesla suspended production for the lockdown as it couldn’t meet the “closed-loop” requirements, Reuters previously reported.

On Sunday, Shanghai recorded 3,450 cases of COVID-19 — around 70% of the nationwide total, The Guardian reported, citing city authorities.

They are China’s highest daily COVID-19 case numbers since the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan in February 2020.

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