Residents wearing face masks to help protect against the coronavirus line up outside a supermarket at night to buy groceries on Sunday, March 27, 2022, in Shanghai, China. China began locking up most of its largest city, Shanghai, on Monday as part of its tough COVID-19 strategy amid questions about the economic cost of the country’s policy. (Photo AP) China began blocking most of its largest city, Shanghai, on Monday as the coronavirus epidemic escalated amid questions about the economic cost of the nation’s zero-COVID strategy. Shanghai’s Pudong Economic District and surrounding areas will be closed from early Monday through Friday as mass tests are being conducted across the city, the local government said. In the second phase of the lockdown, the huge downtown area west of the Huangpu River that separates the city will then launch its own five-day lockdown on Friday. Residents will have to stay home and deliveries will be left at checkpoints to ensure there is no contact with the outside world. Offices and all businesses that are not considered necessary will remain closed and public transport will be suspended. Already, many communities in the city of 26 million have been excluded, with residents having to take multiple COVID-19 tests. And the Shanghai Disney theme park is among the companies that closed earlier. Shanghai identified another 3,500 cases of the infection on Sunday, although all but 50 were positive but showed no symptoms of COVID-19. China categorizes such cases separately from “confirmed cases” – those in people who are ill – leading to much lower totals in the daily reports. China has reported more than 56,000 infections nationwide this month, with an increase in the northeastern province of Jilin being responsible for most of them. In response to its largest outbreak in two years, China has continued to impose what it calls the “dynamic zero-sum COVID-19” approach, calling it the most cost-effective and effective prevention strategy against COVID-19. This requires lockdown and mass testing, with close contacts often being quarantined at home or at central government facilities. The strategy focuses on eliminating community transmission of the virus as quickly as possible, sometimes closing entire cities. While officials, including Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, have encouraged more targeted action, local officials tend to take a more extreme approach, worrying about dismissal or otherwise being punished for not doing so. With China’s economic growth already slowing, extreme measures are seen as exacerbating the difficulties facing employment, consumption and even global supply chains. While the vaccination rate in China is about 87%, it is significantly lower among the elderly. National figures released earlier this month showed that more than 52 million people aged 60 and over have not yet been vaccinated with any COVID-19 vaccine. Souvenir rates are also low, with only 56.4% of people between the ages of 60-69 having received a booster vaccine and 48.4% of people between 70-79 having one.
