-
A woman in Shanghai, China, had her eyelid surgery stitches removed at the gate of her residential complex.
-
Dr. Zhou Zhaoping said he was forced to perform the procedure this way as the building was under a COVID lockdown.
-
Widescale COVID restrictions have been implemented in Shanghai amid a surge in local cases.
A woman in Shanghai, China, had to have the cosmetic surgery stitches in her eyelids removed at the gate of her residential housing complex after the area she lives in was placed under a COVID-19 lockdown.
A video of the unnamed woman undergoing the procedure has been making its rounds on Chinese social media, with the hashtag “doctor removes double eyelid stitches through the fence” receiving more than 140 million views on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform.
Dr. Zhou Zhaoping, who attended to the woman, told Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper that he had “no choice” but to carry out the procedure in such a fashion. “The stitches will be very hard to remove if we leave it for too long, and it could even cause scarring,” he said.
According to the outlet, the woman’s cosmetic surgery was performed in mid-March, and she had the stitches removed last Saturday. She had undergone a double-eyelid surgery, which creates a crease in the eyelids to make one’s eyes appear larger.
Dr. Zhou initially suggested sending the woman a box of surgical tools so that she could get a neighbor to remove the stitches for her, per The Paper. However, she could not find any help so he decided to head down to do it himself.
“It wasn’t easy to do it while standing because my hands would shake, so I asked her to keep her chin on the gate to stay still,” he told the outlet. “The security guard at the gate was watching us, but we both have negative COVID tests, and we both wore masks, so I figured the risk [of transmitting the virus] was low.”
Dr. Zhou did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Shanghai, a financial hub with 26 million residents, has been split in two following a mass COVID-19 lockdown of the city that was implemented this week. Those living east of the Huangpu River have been barred from leaving their homes, while a five-day lockdown for those living west of the river will begin on Friday.
Before the regulations, pockets of the city — including residential complexes — had already been placed under lockdown.
The city recorded 4,381 asymptomatic COVID-19 cases and 96 symptomatic cases on Monday, per Reuters.
Read the original article on Insider
