The Chinese financial center of Shanghai will begin to loosens the lockdown in some areas as of today, despite being recorded above 25,000 new COVID-19 caseswhile the authorities are struggling to start moving the city again after more than two weeks.
Pressure is mounting on the authorities of China’s most populous city – and one of the richest – by Kresidents who appear more and more frustrated as the restrictions drag on, making some of them difficult to find sufficient quantities of food and medicine.
THE Shanghai categorizes housing estates into three risk categories as a step toward allowing ‘appropriate activities’ by citizens in neighborhoods where there are no positive coronavirus cases within two weeks, said Gu Honghui, a city official.
Although it was not immediately clear how many of the 25 million inhabitants would benefit from one immediate relaxation of lockdownsthis move promises some relief for many who are confined to their homes for more than three weeks in a battle against the biggest outbreak in China since the coronavirus was spotted in central China in late 2019.
In a videowhich has been widely circulated on the internet, shows the inhabitants of a series of apartment complexes to scream and shout from their windows.
Some social media users have criticized this move of relaxation as great risk in a period with a record number of daily cases, however others said Shanghai had no choice.
“I think this is the way for Shanghai to admit that it can not continue to impose a lockdown, while ensuring that its citizens will not starve to death,” said a Weibo user.
At the same time, allegations of checks continue, with some in the Sukhoi area telling Reuters that local authorities had placed padlocks and bicycle chains on their doors late Sunday to restrict them to their homes.
China’s ‘zero tolerance’ approach to COVID-19, quarantining anyone who is positive even without symptoms, is under increasing pressure due to the more contagious, albeit less lethal, variant Omicron strain.
This policy has led to the cessation of almost all international travel and now has an increasingly economic impact, as cities impose restrictions, with southern Guangzhou and eastern Ningbo being the last to do so, while other countries are trying to learn. to coexist with the disease.
Today, the European Chamber of Commerce in China announced that it had sent a letter to the State Council in Beijing, the country’s cabinet, outlining the challenges companies face from the recent COVID prevention measures.
However, a ‘dynamic clean-up’ policy remains the ‘best option’ for Shanghai, said official Liang Yuanyan. It is misleading to view Omicron as a ‘big flu’ and relaxing the alert in China would put a huge number of its elderly people at risk, especially as the virus mutates, said Liang, who chairs a panel of the National Health Committee on COVID-19.
Shanghai recorded 25,173 new asymptomatic infections yesterday, up from 23,937 a day earlier, although the number of symptomatic cases dropped to 914 from 1,006.
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