The city of Shanghai, China’s financial hub, announced this Friday (20) its first cases of Covid-19 in five days outside areas affected by strict social isolation rules. The new infections, however, should not influence the plans of local authorities to reopen the entire city from the 1st.
The shopping center of 25 million people is in its seventh week of quarantine, but in recent days the city administration has slowly allowed more people to leave their homes. Contrary to the measures imposed at the beginning of the pandemic, still in January 2020, China now adopts the dynamic lockdown model and isolates only neighborhoods, buildings or establishments with case records.
That’s what happened this Friday in Qingpu district, where authorities blocked access and disinfected several places, after the discovery of three new cases of the disease. In addition, 250,000 residents of the area were tested for the virus.
Hongkou, another district of the city, also ordered the closure of all stores, and the local population is prohibited from leaving their homes until Sunday (22) – the idea is that until then mass tests for the disease will be carried out. In the case of Hongkou, however, regional leaders did not confirm new cases, but did not clarify the reason for the restrictions.
In an official account on the Chinese social network WeChat, officials said the district “will carry out three consecutive rounds of PCR tests for the entire population”. The area is home to 750,000 people.
Despite the new infections, Shanghai officials said on Friday that measures for the gradual reopening of the city were underway. Parks in the suburbs, for example, are due to reopen in two days, but others more central will not reopen until next month. Leisure facilities within the parks will remain closed.
A plan to reopen four subway lines from Sunday is also ongoing, according to the city government.
Last Tuesday (17), the prefecture had announced that it had reached the goal of “zero Covid” – Beijing’s strategy that aims to completely eliminate the spread of the coronavirus and a target of questioning by world health authorities. The announcement came after the city did not register, for three consecutive days, new symptomatic cases of the disease outside the areas delimited for quarantine.
Due to strict social isolation measures, which even led to protests from part of the population, Shanghai experienced a broad economic decline in April, with many factories closed and consumers trapped at home. According to data released on Friday, the city’s industrial production shrank 61.5% from last year, the biggest monthly decline since 2011.
In addition, reports show a lack of food supply, disrespect for privacy and poor conditions in sick treatment centers.
In the wake of the low economic numbers presented in the country in recent days, the European Chamber of Commerce in China warned this week that many companies and individuals are “seriously considering their presence in China”, even though this month the pandemic situation in Shanghai and in other areas of the world has improved.
In Beijing, with 22 million people, authorities have been trying to end an outbreak of the virus since late April. Food services, for example, are banned, and with malls and businesses closed, public transport has been reduced, and residents have been advised to work from home.
The Chinese capital, however, did not register an explosion of cases like Shanghai: on Thursday (19), Beijing recorded 62 new infections, seven more than the previous day.
In the capital’s largest district, Chaoyang, a soccer field popular with children was closed off and covered with coils of wire in an attempt by local management to curb unnecessary displacement of residents in the area. Signs around it announced that the place was “temporarily closed during the pandemic”.
According to Reuters, just on Friday, young dating couples who were meeting next to a Beijing channel were turned away by security agents, who carried loudspeakers. The date is celebrated by the Chinese as Valentine’s Day, albeit unofficially.
Analysts at a company dedicated to analyzing the Chinese economy estimate that less than 5% of the country’s cities have reported new Covid-19 infections – at the end of March, it was 25%.
Many cities have established controls within their boundaries and often carry out mass testing. When any contamination is detected, authorities isolate all people who have had contact with the infected person, even determining the blockade of condominiums. The country has a system of QR Codes and tracking through which it is possible to know where each person traveled and with whom they interacted.
