The Chinese financial center of Shanghai will start easing the lockdown in some areas from today, despite the fact that more than 25,000 new cases of COVID-19 are registered, while 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 – from residents who appear increasingly frustrated as restrictions drag on, making it difficult for some to find adequate food and medicine. .
Shanghai ranks housing estates in three risk categories, as a step towards 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 people would benefit from an immediate easing of lockdowns, the move promises some relief for many who have been confined to their homes for more than three weeks in a battle against China’s biggest outbreak. since the coronavirus was detected in central China in late 2019.
A video that has been widely circulated on the internet shows residents in a series of apartment complexes screaming and shouting from their windows.
Some social media users criticized the move as a big risk in a period of record daily number of cases, but 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 is now having 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, compared with 23,937 a day earlier, although the number of symptomatic cases dropped to 914 from 1,006.
SOURCE: AMPE
Source: Capital
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