Just over a week after the relaxation of the lockdown that rigidly confined the population of Shanghai for more than two months, residents of China’s important financial hub were surprised by new lockdowns to stop the wave of contamination by Covid-19.
The lockdown in the city, one of the most severe in the world, took infected people to quarantine centers with little structure, caused episodes of shortages in some regions and for a time separated children from their families. This sent waves of outrage across the city, with organized protest movements on Chinese social media and screaming demonstrations from the windows of buildings.
The Chinese authorities did not give in to the pressure and maintained the rigidity of the rules until the number of deaths returned to zero and the number of cases was controlled, all within the so-called zero Covid policy, in which the goal is to neutralize the disease.
Relaxation on June 1 spread a wave of euphoria, but the new lockdowns reminded that the Covid zero policy must not be abandoned anytime soon. On Thursday (9), however, after confirming four symptomatic cases and five asymptomatic cases of the disease, the city administration decided to close seven districts again over the next weekend and carry out mass tests.
In a city of 25 million, however, even a partial lockdown represents a lot of people at home: just one of the confined districts, Minhang, has around 2.5 million residents.
But, as decisions on Covid-19 are generally decentralized in the country and often fall to leaders of neighborhood or condominium committees, some buildings in the central region of the city were already closing after residents came into contact with contaminated people.
The siege remains closed. Three recent contaminations were identified as related to a famous beauty salon in the city, Red Rose, which has served 502 people since the end of the lockdown. As a result, authorities had to test about 90,000 people who had some kind of contact with customers or the salon’s 16 employees, the city’s health service said, according to Reuters.
The return of tightening rules is also taking place in Beijing, where restaurants and nightclubs have been closed in Dongcheng and Chaoyang districts, in the east of the city, and there will be mass tests. According to the city administration, the risk of the disease spreading still exists and “our control and prevention of the epidemic must not have an iota of relaxation”. Since the end of April, the city has faced fears that it will also experience the rigidity of the Shanghai lockdown.
After more than two years with closed borders, the arrival of the omicron variant made the number of cases skyrocket and, from April onwards alone, the country recorded 588 deaths from the disease, concentrated in Shanghai – the number is low by Brazilian standards or of western nations, but considered very high in the face of the rigidity of the Chinese Covid zero policy.
In all, the country recorded 240 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, most of them in Inner Mongolia province, on the northern border of China.
In addition to the omicron, the control of the disease gained political motives. That’s because in the second half of this year the country will hold the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party, in which the current leader, Xi Jinping, is expected to confirm an unprecedented third term. The most powerful figure in the Chinese regime since Deng Xiaoping, Xi managed to abolish the two-term limit at the head of the country in 2018, paving the way to remain in power indefinitely. In this scenario, controlling the disease, in addition to the propaganda that the country was the one that best knew how to deal with the pandemic in the world, is seen as fundamental to maintain internal support for the current leader.
Meanwhile, the population tries to resume normal life. This Tuesday (7) and Wednesday (8), for example, a month later than expected due to the outbreak of the disease, a record of almost 12 million students took the “gaokao”, a kind of Chinese Enem that gives access to universities of the country, in 330 thousand test sites. According to the official press, 120 students took the quarantine center test.
