A woman was forced to have her eyelid stitches removed at the gate of her residential complex after the building was put into COVID-19 lockdown

• A woman in Shanghai had eyelid stitches removed at the gate of her residential complex.
• Dr. Zhou Zhaoping said he had to perform the procedure this way with the building under lockdown.

A woman in Shanghai had to have the cosmetic-surgery stitches in her eyelids removed at the gate of her housing complex after the area she lives in was placed under a COVID-19 lockdown, reports say.

A video of the unnamed woman undergoing the procedure has been making its rounds on Chinese social media, with the topic “doctor removes double eyelid stitches through the fence” receiving more than 140 million views on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform.

The Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper reported that Dr. Zhou Zhaoping, who attended to the woman, said 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 on Saturday. She had undergone a double-eyelid surgery, which creates a crease in the eyelids to make one’s eyes appear larger.

Zhou initially suggested sending the woman a box of surgical tools so she could get a neighbor to remove the stitches for her, The Paper reported. But she could not find any help, so he decided 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 was low.”

Zhou did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Shanghai, a financial hub with 26 million residents, has been split in two after 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, Reuters reported.