Shanghai has reached a major COVID milestone, while Beijing is on the edge of a new one.
Reuters: Shanghai said it had found no new COVID-19 cases outside quarantine areas. This is a big victory for the city, which has been paralysed and residents in Beijing have been on edge.
As a long Labor Day weekend began, residents were afraid that authorities would add more restrictions to a time when many people go on vacation or go out with their friends and family.
When most countries in the world are learning how to live with the coronavirus, in the same way, pictures of homes and buildings in Shanghai, China, where people were kept inside to keep them from leaving, have made the news recently.
China has a zero-COVID policy that aims to get rid of the disease that makes people angry and frustrated after being stuck inside for more than a month. Some people, who are having a hard time finding food and other things they need every day, have shown rare public opposition to the government’s strict rules.
A victory for President Xi Jinping’s strategy if the zero-tolerance campaign works would be a good thing for him to do this year when he’s expected to get a record-breaking third term in office.
People in Shanghai were happy when they didn’t talk about it at their daily news conference on Friday. The topic “Shanghai sees zero-COVID transmission at the community level” got more than 190,000 views on the Weibo platform on Saturday morning.
“Shanghai has finally reached zero at the community level. This is a big deal! “May Shanghai wake up as quickly as possible! A post said that it’s possible we’ll be freed after the May holiday, said another person.
There were no cases outside of quarantine areas in Shanghai on Friday, compared to 108 on Thursday. After stopping transmissions outside quarantine zones, other Chinese cities that were under lockdown have eased their restrictions.
But some people were sceptical about the Shanghai milestone because most of the city’s people were in quarantine.
More than 4 million people were not allowed to leave their homes in Shanghai on Saturday, health officials said. There were close to 16,000 areas in the city that had been closed off. Another 5.4 million people could not leave their homes.
Many people who live in low-risk prevention areas are still not allowed to leave their homes.
Shanghai’s epidemic and prevention control is still in a very bad way, and people still need to do more to keep it that way, said Zhao Dandan, a deputy director of Shanghai’s health commission, who spoke to People. This level of defence we’ve worked hard to get is now ours. Let’s hold on to it.
THE ECONOMIC IMPACT
Omicron is a highly transmissible strain of Ebola that can spread very quickly in Shanghai. The fight to stop it has cost the economy, businesses, and people there, as well as delivery companies and logistics chains.
In April, China’s factory activity fell the fastest in 26 months to its lowest level since the beginning of the pandemic, which was first found in central China. Lockdowns slowed down industrial production and messed with supply chains. There are fears that the second quarter will slow down a lot, which will hurt global growth.
Shanghai officials, who say they want factories to get back to work, said that more than 80% of the 666 companies they had chosen to start back up had done so. They also made a second list of 1,188 companies.
Infections are going down as the world’s most populous country enters its Labor Daybreak, which lasts from Monday to Wednesday. This is usually one of China’s busiest times for tourists, but this year the virus has taken a huge toll on the number of people coming to China.
Some people say that the government has been less strict about making people take tests in the last few days.
In Beijing, authorities are trying to find COVID cases quickly and isolate people who have been infected. People in the area have to show the results of their nucleic acid tests before they go to public places or use public transportation after the holiday break.
Officials in both cities haven’t given a timetable or plan for how to get back to some kind of normalcy.
A report from Nomura says that 46 cities have been put on full or partial lockdowns, affecting 343 million people. Societe Generale (OTC: SCGLY) thinks that provinces with a lot of restrictions on mobility make up about 80% of China’s economic output.
In response to COVID and other problems, China will do more to help the economy, a top decision-making body of the Communist Party said on Friday. This helped lift stocks from two-year lows.
47 people died in Shanghai on Friday, down from 52 the day before.
Some people have questioned the death rate because many people in the area say that relatives or friends died after getting coronavirus as early as March.
On Saturday, the Xinhua news agency said that 48 people in Beijing had COVID-19 symptoms every day, compared to 47 the day before. The city also had six cases of no symptoms, compared to two the day before, it said.
Mainland China saw 10,793 new cases of COVID-19 each day, down from 15,688 the day before, the National Health Commission said on Saturday. That’s down from 15,688 the day before.
