According to Reuters workers had been locked into their workplace since 14 October, workers were subjected to endless PCR tests, had to wear N95 masks, were given traditional Chinese medicine in addition to making iPhones.

Whenever a positive or suspected case was found at a production line, there would be a public broadcast, but work would continue, one worker said.

“People would be called away in the middle of work, and if they don’t show up the next day, that would mean they had been taken away,” Yuan said.

Some of the 200,000 workers at the plant just had enough and climbed the fences and escaped the complex. One worker said that many people were on the road trying to escape the Foxconn plant.

Foxconn kept thousands of workers on-site in so-called “closed-loop” systems to keep their production lines running.

“Food for tens of thousands was merely left outside (of the quarantine buildings at the plant),” said a worker said.

Foxconn denied 20,000 staff and insisted that workers were allowed to leave if they chose to.