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Shanghai relaxes lockdown in selected zones amid another record COVID surge in China

Shanghai on Monday relaxed strict lockdown in selected zones even as it again registered more than 26000 new locally transmitted cases with 914 symptomatic cases. Shanghai’s authorities have reclassified the city’s 16 districts according to the severity of the Covid-19 outbreak after six rounds of mass testing. A total of 7,565 areas have been declared “precautionary zones”, the lowest-risk category because they recorded zero cases of the Omicron variant over the past 14 days.

Relaxation came amid local residents’ continuous complaints about the over-kill approach by the authorities, which hampered the deliveries of food and daily essentials, disrupted supply chains, forcibly separated children from their parents and even led to the brutal killings of pets. Chinese economist Lang Hsien-ping’s elderly mother died as she could not receive treatment at a hospital due to the non-availability of her Covid-19 test result even after waiting for four hours, according to his social media blog on Monday terming it as an “avoidable tragedy”.

As COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai have disrupted daily life and the economy, citizens elsewhere in China are anxious about similar stringent measures even as officials seek to assure the public that they are well prepared. On Friday, Dr Zhong Nanshan, the country’s top respiratory diseases expert, criticised the city officials for their under-preparedness and insufficient understanding of the transmission characteristics of the Omicron variant. As news of Shanghai residents struggling to buy food spread across China, anxiety prevailed among residents in other provinces who reportedly rushed to stock up on daily provisions. Multiple “survival guides” have been shared on social media in the past few days as people in other parts of China observed the situation in Shanghai.

The situation in Shanghai also prompted other Chinese cities to take a stricter zero-risk approach to Covid using the same playbook. The southern city of Guangzhou closed in-person classes at elementary and middle schools as of Monday, shifting courses online at least for a week. Municipal authorities said locals should not leave the city unless necessary and would need a negative virus test within the last 48 hours to do so.

Capital Beijing, port city Ningbo and Nanjing have also tightened COVID regulations and strict travel restrictions. In the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first identified at the end of 2019, passengers taking the city metro now need to show proof of a negative Covid test, according to state media. Cities neighbouring Shanghai have enacted their own restrictions over the past week, amid fears of spillover and a possibility of multiple major outbreaks. In nearby Zhejiang province, authorities pledged to ramp up controls on people entering the region.

State media reported that 14,000 recovered Covid-19 patients have been discharged in Shanghai so far and they will be sent back home under closed-loop management. Jilin and Shandong provinces that used to be hotspots of COVID19 outbreaks are trying to resume some activities. Jilin and Shanghai had most of the caseload in the ongoing outbreak but cases have been found in some 29 provinces and municipalities with a new sub-variant also being detected.

In the wake of the challenges faced by locked-down residents in Shanghai and Jilin and earlier in Xian with officials apologizing for mismanagement, citizens have raised serious questions in online discussions about whether the cost of controlling the virus is greater than the risk of the virus itself.

As most of the infected people don’t have symptoms, many experts say that the government should abandon the zero-COVID policy and redirect medical resources to the elderly and vulnerable instead. Shanghai has now reported over 200,000 positive cases from March 1. Mainland China reported more than 27500 new locally transmitted cases with 1164 symptomatic cases on Monday.

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