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Journalist Fabian Kretschmer claimed in a DW interview (at 1m56):

For every case you have to shut down a factory, you have to shut down a port. In May, for example, they had to shut down the Yantian port near Shenzen, and that was basically the biggest incident disrupting global supply chains. It had a bigger impact than even the incident at the Suez Canal.

This was said in the context of news about a newer incident, subtitled as:

China has suspended operations at the world's third busiest cargo port after a worker was infected with the coronavirus.

Did China shut down an entire port after finding one Covid-19 case?

Did this closure have a bigger disruptive effect on supply chains than the Suez incident of March 2021, in which an adrift container ship blocked the canal? Is there some quantitative data to substantiate this (latter) claim?

Fizz
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  • Can you add dates (or approximate dates, like early June 2021), e.g. for the claim and the (alleged) start of the shutdown? – Peter Mortensen Sep 09 '21 at 09:25
  • @PeterMortensen: no such dates are provided in the video besides "May" [2021], which is already in the quote, so I'd be second guessing. It's for answers to describe the event that happened, including how long it lasted. – Fizz Sep 09 '21 at 09:27
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    Possibly more a case that the Suez incident was a nothingburger. Many of the ships coming through there were "slow steaming" anyway (running 50-70% of design cruise to conserve fuel), and could top up while waiting then run at full speed to make up time. They had every incentive to; missing their window at the destination port would put them in a long queue to unload. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Sep 10 '21 at 00:21

2 Answers2

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No, it wasn't one case, but an outbreak. That appears to have been a misinterpretation of the claim.

Fortune put the outbreak at 'about 150' COVID-19 cases.

The size of the disruption to supply chains is backed by a media briefing from shipping company Maersk

Seatrade Maritime News reported on the claim:

Putting the magnitude of the issue at Yantian port is causing container shipping into sharp perspective Vincent Clerc, AP Moller-Maersk’s CEO of Ocean & Logistics, stated: “I would say this for us is a much bigger disruption than the Ever Given getting stuck in the Suez Canal for some days because of the duration and the importance of Yantian as a gateway.”

The blockage of the Suez Canal only lasted for six days, while the situation in Yantian has already lasted several weeks with no end in sight for the coming weeks either. The port handles around 13.5m teu a year or about 36,400 teu a day, making a key gateway port on a global scale.

“Right now, we have vessel delays of up to 16 days outside Yantian which is of course going to cause significant ripple effect across the network from a reliability perspective,” Clerc explained.

Lars Jensen, CEO of Danish consultancy Vespucci Maritime, made similar claims:

Yantian handled 13.3m teu in 2020, equal to 36,400 teu per day. Presuming that Yantian – responsible for more than one-third of Guangdong’s foreign trade and one-fourth of China’s trade with the US – has been working at 30% operating efficiency since the Covid-19 outbreak was detected 14 days ago, that would mean 25,500 teu per day have not been handled, totalling some 357,000 teu to date.

Putting this in context, when Suez was blocked by the Ever Given this impacted a daily flow of 55,000 teu. However, March’s Suez crisis lasted for just six days.

These seem to be back of the envelope calculations performed by experts who have a financial stake in the outcome, rather than a full peer-reviewed analysis by economists, but it appears reasonable justification for the journalist using it as a comparison to help people understand the magnitude of the problem.

Oddthinking
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    Interesting in the (English-speaking) Chinese media I could only find one [article](https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1224155.shtml) about the Yantian outbreak, which only mentioned two cases. Perhaps this is why/how the info about that was remembered by some. – Fizz Sep 07 '21 at 20:15
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    There's a later [article](https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202106/1225518.shtml) in Chinese state media that discussed shipping delays, but this doesn't discuss the magnitude of the outbreak... at the port. It does discuss it in the province as a whole: "As of midnight on Sunday, 2,542 confirmed cases of COVID-19 had been reported in the province, including 1,052 imported cases, according to the Health Commission of Guangdong Province." – Fizz Sep 07 '21 at 20:21
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    Also, the Fortune piece you've quoted for the 150-cases figure doesn't given any details on that in the body of the article, like a source or something. The number only appears in the title and 1st sentence. I suspect the number comes from a Reuters report, but it wasn't specific to the port https://www.reuters.com/world/china/congestion-south-china-ports-worsens-anti-covid-19-measures-2021-06-11/ – Fizz Sep 07 '21 at 20:36
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    Might be helpful to link at least one instance of "teu" for those not in the know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit – David Sep 08 '21 at 08:25
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    @Fizz: I agree that this answer doesn't delve far into the question of the size of the outbreak, for two reasons: (1) I, perhaps wrongly, thought the size of the impact was the core of the reason for your skepticism, and (2) listening to Kretschmer's words, my interpretation was he didn't intend to imply the outage was due to a single case, despite the preceding phrase about every case closing a factory. I think if we asked him "Did you mean there was one case behind the port closure?" he would deny it. I acknowledge this is open to interpretation. – Oddthinking Sep 08 '21 at 10:24
  • I wonder if there is confusion between the Yuntian port (Do we agree that is what Kretschmer said? I hate relying on my own transcription of a foreign language) which closed in June and the Meidong/Meishan (?) terminals which closed in August due to one COVID case - according to [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2021/08/13/ningbo-port-closure-covid-china-shipping-backlog/) and [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-12/world-third-busiest-port-partly-shut-due-to-covid-outbreak). I don't have high trust in these reports. – Oddthinking Sep 08 '21 at 10:33
  • I'd be interested to know how much of that 357,000 teu flow was able to be diverted — presumably rerouting to another port on the South China coast is somewhat easier (or at least quicker) than rerouting around the Horn of Africa. – David Moles Sep 08 '21 at 19:06
  • @DavidMoles: According to Reuters there were several ports in China to which was done, some also in Guangdong, but they ended up at 90%+ capacity. – Fizz Sep 09 '21 at 02:48
  • The Shenzhen health commision's [website](http://wjw.sz.gov.cn/yqxx/index_15.html) has the official figures that include Yuntian port. For example this [report](http://wjw.sz.gov.cn/yqxx/content/post_8793825.html) suggest it was one initial case found at the port, leading to the discovery of four asymptomatic cases among his coworkers. – AlphaD Sep 09 '21 at 04:24
  • The "one case" thing seems to be common in antivaxdom - they do the same thing with New Zealand. ("going into lockdown over one case proves zero covid is impossible" or something like that) – user253751 Sep 09 '21 at 10:29
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    As far as I understood, yes, the Chinese go into some kind of lockdown over one case, but for one case they would not operate at <30% capacity for weeks. So the first case they found was the reason why they shut down and tested everyone, but the spread they subsequently detected was the reason why the event became more impactful than Ever Given in Suez. – Alexander Sep 09 '21 at 14:02
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    @Alexander: If you have references, please make that an answer. Otherwise, it doesn't help much – Oddthinking Sep 09 '21 at 14:26
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According to a CNBC report, this claim is accurate: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/13/chinas-zero-covid-strategy-to-disrupt-shipping-as-ningbo-zhoushan-port-shuts-.html

theCuriousMind
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    At least quote the article. "China has shut down a key terminal at its Ningbo-Zhoushan port, the third busiest port in the world, after one worker was found to be infected by Covid". Link only answers are discouraged because of link rot. – candied_orange Sep 09 '21 at 20:07
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    You are allowed and encouraged to [edit] your answer to improve it. This is normal procedure on StackExchange, since it is a Q&A site, not a discussion forum. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Sep 10 '21 at 00:25