China: Unprecedented Lockdown in Shanghai as Covid Cases Jumped

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, March 29: In an unprecedented move to confine people to their homes to beat the country’s biggest ongoing Covid-19 outbreak, millions of people in China’s financial hub of eastern Shanghai were placed under strictest-ever lockdown not allowing them to come out of their homes at all, not even in the open areas of their residential complexes or even to walk the pets.

The unprecedented restrictions in one half of the city in the first phase of the two-phase lockdown was imposed as local daily Covid-19 infections jumped to a record 4,477 on Tuesday. All residents in the Pudong district, home to many elite financial institutions and the Shanghai Stock Exchange, will be confined to their homes and allowed out only to get a Covid test, according to an order issued by the Shanghai municipal health commission.  “Residents shouldn’t walk in the hallways, garages or open areas of their residential compounds in order to reduce the risk of infection,” Wu Qianyu, an official with the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, said during a briefing on Tuesday. The restrictions included even walking pets.

The lockdown in Pudong will last until Friday, then switch to the more populated western Puxisection, home to the historic Bund riverfront. The government said the steps were being taken to root out infections “as soon as possible.”

The stricter lockdown rules came a day after the Chinese financial hub started sealing off its 25 million people in two stages, with half the city locked down for four days, followed by the other half. The goal is to test the entire city for Covid-19, part of the effort to get its biggest outbreak to date under control.

The new omicron BA.2 sub-variant is widely blamed for bringing a new surge in cases to Shanghai, which had suffered relatively little effect from the pandemic that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. Authorities say the two-phase approach was designed to reduce disruptions, and unlike in past situations, definite end dates have been given for lockdown in Shanghai.

Previously residents could go to the lobby of their buildings and walk around the open areas of their compounds. Some could even leave the complex as long as no infections had been detected in their buildings. While the Shanghai government said Sunday night that residents were required to stay home, the harsh home confinement wasn’t articulated until Tuesday.

The unpredictable neighbourhood-level measures employed in recent weeks have left many citizens frustrated with repeated, brief confinement sat home. Some complained that only several hours’ notice was given for the new, larger lockdown. “We really don’t understand Shanghai’s management and control measures. There has indeed been some inconsistency,” said a 59-year-old man who gave only his surname Cao as he queued to buy groceries.

Panic buying has struck markets and some residents have reported shortages of fresh meat and vegetables, including on online platforms. Authorities are working to ensure food supplies and have converted gymnasiums and exhibition centres to house patients, most of whom show no symptoms. The shutdown adds to anxiety in financial markets over Russia’s war on Ukraine, the Federal Reserve’s effort to cool surging inflation by raising interest rates and other economic challenges.

Authorities are imposing a two-phase lockdown of the city of about 25 million people to carry out mass testing. The government had sought to avoid the hard lockdowns regularly deployed in other Chinese cities, opting instead for rolling localised lockdowns to keep Shanghai’s economy running. But Shanghai has in recent weeks become China’s Covid hotspot, and on Monday another record high was reported, with 3,500 new confirmed cases in the city.

Covid cases jumped to 4,477 on the first day of the lockdown, from 3,500 reported on Monday. There were 6,886 cases nationwide on Tuesday, according to data from China’s National Health Commission. The Shanghai municipal government will continue to support the import antiviral drugs and Covid vaccines, officials said at the briefing, without providing further details. China has imported some 21,000 boxes of Pfizer Inc.’s Covid pill Paxlovid through Shanghai earlier this month, and has been treating high-risk patients with the drug.

The city also has rolled out a slew of measures, including tax relief, rent extension or reductions, and loan support for small businesses, retail and catering industries hit hard by the outbreak, officials said. Shanghai’s lockdown came after a month of less disruptive measures failed to stymie omicron’s fast and stealthy spread in the community.

While officials vowed to keep the financial hub, a critical node in the global supply chain, open to avoid disruption to the Chinese and global economy, cases grew as authorities targeted more buildings and expanded the scope of testing. So far China’s financial markets and the Shanghai port, which is the World’s biggest, remain open and are operating normally.

China largely kept the virus under control for the past two years through strict zero-tolerance measures including mass lockdowns of cities and provinces for even small numbers of cases. But Omicron has proven harder to stamp out. China has reported several thousand newdaily cases for the past two weeks. Those numbers remain insignificant globally but are up sharply from fewer than 100 a day in February.

Tens of millions of residents in affected areas across China have been subjected to city wide lockdowns in response. But as Shanghai has struggled, some cities have made progress. The southern tech manufacturing hub Shenzhen — which locked down earlier in the current outbreak — announced that normal business activity was resuming on Monday as new cases have dropped.

While Shenzhen saw infections wind down to single digits after it emerged from a week-long lockdown, cities including Langfang and Tangshan near capital Beijing, as well as the entire north-eastern province of Jilin, have remained sealed off for up to two weeks. When Shanghai is included, some 62 million people in China are either in lockdown or facing one imminently.