NEWS / Shanghai: locked in

As of April 27, Covid restrictions have been relaxed in some parts of Shanghai. But the city has also seen excessive restrictions in the hope of stemming the spread of Covid among Shanghai’s 26 million residents.

City officials have erected fences around some of the city’s apartments. The barricades are designed to force residents to stay in their buildings. They also restrict residents from shopping for food and other essentials. They create the potential for disaster if a fire were to break out in an apartment building.

Most places affected by the fences are in Pudong’s “sealed areas,” a designation for buildings where at least one person has tested positive for COVID recently. Security personnel guard the fenced buildings 24-hours a day.

China has not budged from its strict zero-Covid strategy. It is using lockdowns, mass testing, quarantines, and border closures to contain the virus. Unfortunately, those steps are not stopping the highly infectious Omicron variant from spreading. For several weeks, Shanghai has seen an infection rate averaging over 10,000 people per day.

The fear is that the virus will quickly spread through Beijing's population of 21 million. There mass testing, quarantines, and school closures are already in place. This has fueled the hoarding of food and other supplies. In addition, full or partial lockdowns have been imposed in at least 27 cities across the country. The populations there total up to 165 million people.

CNN notes that China’s reports about Covid are forcing it to walk a communication tightrope. According to health security expert Nicholas Thomas, an associate professor at City University of Hong Kong, “If the numbers are too low, not only is there a problem of trust, but also it will make the quarantine restrictions seem excessive. If the numbers are too high, then the lockdowns are justified but the authorities have failed to contain the virus.”

Sources: SupChina, MSN, CNN, Global Times, AOL News, Reuters