Customers at an Ikea in Shanghai tried to flee the store on Saturday (local time) after they feared they would be locked in by health officials.
According to the BBC, the Ikea store's sudden shutdown was ordered because a close contact of a six-year-old boy who tested positive after returning to Shanghai from Lhasa in Tibet had visited, Shanghai Health Commission deputy director Zhao Dandan said.
The guards in the store closed the doors but the crowd of customers forced them open and escaped.
On Sunday (local time) nearly 400 close contacts of the six-year-old boy who is asymptomatic had been traced while 80,000 people had been ordered to undergo PCR testing, Shanghai Daily reported.
Shanghai has a strict 'zero- COVID' strategy where many people have been locked down in unusual locations including hot pot restaurants, gyms and offices where positive cases or their close contacts had been detected.
In March, the city had an intense two-month lockdown where there were food shortages and poor living conditions, BBC reported.
Ikea's customer service said the store was shut due to COVID curbs.
