Hector Retamal | Afp | Getty Images BEIJING – China’s largest city, Shanghai, launched a two-stage lockdown on Monday as authorities try different strategies to sustain growth as they try to control the country’s worst Covid-19 epidemic since the pandemic began. Shanghai, a city of 26 million people on China’s southeast coast, is a hub for funding and international business in the country. The city is also home to the largest container port in the world. The quarantine measures include orders to work from home as well as the suspension of public transport and hail, the city of Shanghai announced on Sunday night. Previously, only certain neighborhoods experienced temporary lockdowns to control outbreak pockets. The initial phase will last from Monday to Friday morning and will apply to the eastern part of the city where the financial center is located, the city said. The second phase will concern the western part of the city and will last from Friday morning until the afternoon of next Tuesday, April 5, the municipal authorities announced. “Lockdown and area-by-area testing in China’s largest city, a major transportation hub and financial center are very likely to disrupt the city’s commercial activity,” said Bruce Pang, head of macroeconomic and strategic research at China Renaissance. “We believe that in the short term, China will insist on a zero-tolerance approach, seeking to [its] “Zero Covid’s position as one of the strictest anti-virus policies in the world,” Pang said. Tesla, whose Shanghai plant is located in the area covered by the first stage of the lockdown, reportedly stopped production for at least one day on Monday, according to Bloomberg, citing sources. The electric car company did not immediately respond to a request from CNBC for comment. The advent of the highly transmissible omicron variant has made outbreak control more difficult and has increased business uncertainty. Local governments across China have attributed the latest wave of cases to the sub-variable BA.2. China has insisted on a lockdown and quarantine strategy to control Covid outbreaks while maintaining economic growth. The policy helped the country recover from the initial shock of the pandemic in early 2020, with relatively few infections and deaths compared to other parts of the world. This time, economists do not expect lockdowns lasting just about a week to have a significant impact on the national economy for the whole year. Travel restrictions and home-stay measures affect consumer spending and services more than factory production, as workers can often stay on site in industrial parks.
Use of targeted measures
In Shanghai, officials have stressed in recent weeks that the city will not lock in and instead use a neighborhood-specific approach. Even in Sunday’s announcement, the city claimed that the two-part lockdown involved conducting batch tests. Shanghai International Port Group, which manages the city’s ports, said in an online statement Monday that in addition to extreme weather conditions, the plants were up and running 24 hours a day.
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Read CNBC’s latest global coverage of the Covid pandemic: And instead of a general ban on travel in and out of Shanghai during the two-stage lockdown, authorities said people in the city who wanted to leave – by motorway, train or plane – would need a negative test within 48 hours of the departure. Shanghai’s two airports, including one focusing on international travel, and three train stations are still operating normally, the municipal transportation authority said Monday morning.
Increase in asymptomatic cases
Newly confirmed cases in the city remained high, with even higher numbers of asymptomatic cases. Shanghai reported 3,450 asymptomatic cases on Sunday, the most for any province-level area in mainland China. The city reported 50 new confirmed Covid cases on the same day. All 3,500 people affected are in isolated treatment or isolated medical care, the city said. The latest March 15 update to Covid National Prevention and Control Policy states that mild and asymptomatic cases can be treated in quarantine centers instead of requiring hospital treatment, which would add to China’s already strained healthcare system.
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Nationwide, the northern province of Jilin accounts for most of the newly confirmed locally transmitted cases – 1,086 of the 1,219 reported for the mainland on Sunday. Although the latest Covid wave has hit provinces across China, the number of newly confirmed cases per day in most areas is below 10. The Beijing capital did not report any newly confirmed confirmed or asymptomatic cases on Sunday. As a sign of how the authorities are trying to restrict travel between countries, China’s national railway company announced on Saturday that travelers will not be able to book tickets for April 8 or for future dates. Sales for these later periods are set to resume on April 2, the railway company said.
