Shanghai, China –This is how it works: Shanghai authorities said on Thursday that even in areas where COVID-19 transmission has been cut to zero, there will still be a lot of restrictions in place. This will make it even more difficult for many people who have been stuck at home for most of this month.
Even though the number of cases outside of quarantined areas rose, health officials said earlier this week that the city had “effectively stopped transmissions.”
At a regular press conference, an official from the Chongming district, which is on an island off the coast, said that most of the curbs would stay in place, even though the district hasn’t had any cases outside of quarantined areas and 90% of its 640,000 or so residents were now allowed to leave their homes.
There are still areas in China where people aren’t allowed to go outside, but Zhang Zhitong said that we need to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t become “free-to-fly areas.”
Cars and trucks won’t be able to drive on the roads without permission, and only one person from each household will be able to leave home every day in some parts of Chongming.
There are nearly 1 million people and some of the city’s most popular malls in the central district of Jingan. Because large crowds can be dangerous to people, the district said Thursday that it would no longer let people leave their housing compounds.
People who thought their lives would start to get back to normal this week are getting angry.
Residents of Jingan, China, wrote on social media that they had lost their “strength to complain about the rules that change from day tonight.” “And this isn’t even a problem that should be talked about when Shanghai has so many other problems.”
A video of a tense exchange between a resident of Jingan and a member of the neighbourhood committee was widely shared on Chinese social media on Wednesday evening.
Asked why she couldn’t leave her home in an area where it was OK, the resident kept getting the same answer: “I told you we got a notice.” She kept getting the same answer. Reuters couldn’t be sure that the video was real.
On Wednesday, Shanghai had 15,861 new cases of local asymptomatic coronavirus, down from 16,407 the day before. As of this writing, the number of people who had symptoms was 2,634, up from 2,494.
The most important thing is that there were 441 new cases outside of quarantined areas, up from 390 the day before.
Eight more people died.
Eight people who had COVID-19 died in Shanghai on Wednesday, the city’s health department said. This brings the death toll from the current outbreak to 25 – all of them in the last four days.
But many people say that a relative died after getting COVID-19, but the official statistics didn’t show that. This raises doubts about the accuracy of the statistics.
The Shanghai government did not answer questions about how many people died.
Chinese state media say three funeral home employees are being investigated for not providing funeral services because of COVID, which is a drug that can make people sick.
A lot of people in Shanghai were asked to stay at home at the start of April when the number of COVID-19 cases started to rise a lot. Residents have lost money, had a hard time getting food, had their families split up, and had bad conditions in quarantine.
Residents have been complaining about the quality and expiration dates of duck meat and cooking oil that are included in government ration packs. City officials said on Thursday that they would look into these complaints, which came from people who live in the city.
Businesses are starting to open again, but they have to run under “closed-loop management,” which means that they have to live on-site, have regular tests, and be very clean.
The electric car company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is one of 666 businesses that can get back to work. This week, the company’s reopening got a lot of attention on state media. Industry groups, on the other hand, say that factories face logistical problems and aren’t yet back to full production.