China’s largest city will lock its eastern half from Monday to Friday, officials said, followed by a similar lockdown on its west side beginning April 1. The metropolis of 25 million inhabitants has become in recent days the top hotspot in a nationwide epidemic that began to intensify in early March. China’s National Health Commission on Sunday reported more than 4,500 new domestic cases, down more than 1,000 from the previous day, but still much higher than the double-digit daily rates usually seen in the past two years. Although the number of cases remains insignificant worldwide, they are the highest in China since the first weeks of the pandemic, which first appeared in Wuhan City in late 2019. Millions of residents in affected areas across the country have been locked down across the city. Shanghai, however, has so far avoided a complete lockdown, with officials saying it was imperative to keep East China’s port and economic hub operational for the good of both the national and global economies. On Saturday, the city recorded 2,631 new asymptomatic cases, accounting for nearly 60% of China’s total new asymptomatic cases that day, plus 47 new symptomatic cases. As the number of cases increases, the city government said in a public statement that the two-part lockdown was implemented “to reduce the spread of the epidemic, to ensure the safety and health of people” and to eliminate cases of infection. as soon as possible”. The vast eastern half of the city, known as Pudong, which includes the main international airport and the financial district, will be closed for testing from Monday morning until April 1. On April 1, the western half of the city, known as Puxi and on the historic Bund River, will be locked until April 5, the government added. Residents were asked to stay indoors during the lockdown and all business and government staff not involved in basic services were informed to work from home. Those involved in the provision of vital services such as gas, electricity, transportation, sanitation and food supply will be excluded from the stay at home order. The announcement said buses, taxis and the city’s extensive metro system would shut down, but made no mention of activity in its huge port, or any impact on air travel or rail services inside and outside Shanghai. On Saturday, a member of the city’s pandemic task force vowed that Shanghai would not close. “If Shanghai, our city, stopped completely, there would be a lot of international cargo ships floating in the East China Sea,” said Wu Fan, a medical expert on the working group, during a daily briefing on the virus. carried out by the municipal authority. “This will affect the entire national economy and the world economy.” The Chinese government had previously kept the virus under national control through strict zero-tolerance measures, including massive locks of entire cities and provinces for even a small number of cases. However, authorities watched nervously as the deadly Omicron blast in Hong Kong sparked market panic and prompted a large number of unvaccinated elderly people in the southern Chinese city. The subsequent spread of variance in mainland China has posed a dilemma for authorities struggling with how vigorously they must respond, with the zero-tolerance approach increasingly being challenged amid concerns about the economic impact and “pandemic fatigue” in particular. taking into account the less severe symptoms of Omicron. Shanghai had sought to reduce the disturbance with a targeted approach to the current outbreak characterized by a 48-hour lockdown of isolated neighborhoods combined with large-scale trials but otherwise keeping the city afloat. However, the milder strategy has so far failed to reduce the number of city cases, and local lockdowns have sparked Internet grievances and grocery shopping in some areas. Agence-France Presse and Reuters contributed to this report
