Shanghai conducted massive tests on its 25 million inhabitants on Monday, as what was announced as a two-phase lockdown entered its second week. Most of eastern Shanghai, which is supposed to reopen last Friday, remained locked along with the western half of the city. While many factories and financial companies have been allowed to continue operating if their employees are isolated, concerns have grown about the potential financial impact of an extensive lockdown in China’s financial capital, a major shipping and manufacturing hub. The highly contagious form of the Omicron BA.2 virus is testing China’s ability to maintain its zero-COVID-19 approach, which aims to stop the spread of epidemics by isolating all those who test positive, whether they have symptoms or not. Shanghai has turned a showroom and other facilities into huge isolation centers where people with mild or no symptoms are housed in a sea of beds separated by temporary partitions. China reported more than 13,000 new cases nationwide in the past 24 hours on Monday, nearly 12,000 of which were asymptomatic. About 9,000 of the cases were in Shanghai. The other major outbreak is in northeast China’s Jilin Province, where more than 3,500 new cases have been reported.
Deficiencies
The lockdown in Shanghai has caused a great deal of grievance, from food shortages to limited staff and hasty facilities. Some people who tested positive have stayed at home for extended periods due to a lack of secluded or transfer beds to be transported to a center, Caixin Business News reported.
Asked about the anxiety of parents who have separated from their children, Shanghai Health Committee official Wu Qianyu said Monday that they should stay apart if the child is positive and the parent is negative, according to Paper, an online news medium. .
If both are positive, the parent is allowed to stay with the child in a child isolation area and receive any treatment there, Wu was quoted as saying at a news conference on Monday.
A health worker prepares to perform a COVID-19 swab test on a residential complex during the second phase of a pandemic lockdown in Shanghai’s Jingan District. (Hector Retamal / AFP / Getty Images)
The China Daily reported that nearly 15,000 doctors from neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces left for Shanghai by bus from their hospitals early Monday. More than 2,000 people from the army, navy and a joint logistics force arrived on Sunday, according to a Chinese military newspaper.
At least four other provinces have also sent doctors, nurses and other doctors to Shanghai, the state-run China Daily reported.
Batch testing
Workers wearing blue protective clothing held signs reading “Keep one meter away” and “Do not overcrowd” as people lined up for tests in a part of western Shanghai. The tests were performed in batches, 10 people at a time. If the sample returns positive, all 10 are tested separately.
While most stores and other businesses in Shanghai are closed, major manufacturers, including General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG say their factories are still operating. VW reduced production due to interruption in the supply of spare parts.
A worker in protective gear talks to residents outside closed shops in the Jingan area. (Chen Si / The Associated Press)
The operating companies implement “closed loop” strategies that isolate employees. Thousands of stockbrokers and other people in the financial industries are sleeping in their offices, according to the Daily Economic News.
Three in five Shanghai-based foreign companies say they have cut their forecasts for sales this year, according to a survey conducted last week by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and the American Chamber of Commerce in China. One-third of the 120 companies that responded to the survey said they had delayed investment.
Shanghai has set up temporary vegetable warehouses to boost supplies, and an online grocery delivery service has doubled staff at one of its warehouses to try to meet demand, the official Xinhua news agency reported. City officials apologized to the government for handling the lockdown.
