China’s financial center in Shanghai launched a two-stage lockout of 26 million residents on Monday, closing bridges and tunnels, and limiting road traffic in an effort to withstand a surge in COVID-19 cases.
The quick lock, announced by the Shanghai city government on Sunday, will divide the city into two roughly along the Huangpu River for nine days to allow “staggering” testing”. This is the biggest COVID-related disturbance that hit the city. While residents in eastern Huangpu were locked up in their homes, those in the west were hoarding food and other important items as they prepared for the same fate starting April, with shipping services overwhelmed and supermarkets running out of stock. “Many wholesale markets are now closed,” said Bi Yingwu, a 50-year-old kiosk owner. “Some traders are reluctant to buy vegetables.
If we can’t get vegetables from wholesalers or wet markets gets closed, we are finished
The locking order marked a turnaround for Shanghai authorities, who until Saturday night denied the city would be locked up for pursuing a fewer “slicing and lattice” approach to try to control the infection.
Wu Fan, a member of the Shanghai COVID expert team, said recent mass testing had found “big scale” infections throughout the city, triggering a stronger response. “Refending large-scale outbreaks in our city is very important because once infected people are controlled, we have blocked transmission,” he said in a briefing, adding that testing would be carried out until all risks were eliminated. Shanghai said earlier this month that its daily testing capacity was around 3 million, but Chen Erzhen, a doctor in charge of municipal quarantine facilities, warns it might still not be enough to go beyond the rapid spread of the virus.
“When the number of cases reaches a certain level, the difficulty of relying on previous staff deployments increases significantly,” he told the Liberation Daily government newspaper, added that the new lock must at least ensure the “silence” needed to bring the plague under control.
Although still low by global standards, Shanghai recorded a record 3,450 cases of asymptomatic COVID on Sunday, accounting for nearly 70% of the national total, along with 50 symptomatic cases. Nationally, there were 5,134 new cases without symptoms and 1,219 cases on Sunday, the health authorities said in their regular bulletin.
As the main engine of China’s economy, Shanghai has sought to heed President Xi Jinping’s call to minimize the impact of COVID control on business and people’s lives.
Wu said at a briefing on Saturday that Shanghai could not be locked long because of the important role it played in the national and even global economy.
But after Sunday’s turn, mass testing has disrupted transportation, health care and various economic activities, with land sales throughout the city also stopped on Monday.
Shanghai Public Security Bureau said it would close bridges and cross-river tunnels, and toll substations were concentrated in the east of the city until April. The bureau said traffic control would be applied on the city in and out highways, and people who had left had to show a negative nucleic acid test taken in the previous 48 hours. Shanghai also said on Sunday it would suspend public transportation, including ride-hailing services, in locked areas.
It also ordered the suspension of work in companies and factories, freeing those who offered public services or supplying food. Some hospitals also suspend services because they release staff and other resources to help mass testing. US carmaker Tesla suspended production at his factory, located in the affected district in the first phase of locking, for four days, two people who were aware of the problem told Reuters. Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
However, Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation said operations at its factory in Shanghai were normal.
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