By Simon Leplatre
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For more than 40 days, China’s largest city has been enforcing drastic measures to combat Covid-19. Story of an abandoned life that undermines morale.
After six weeks of strict lockdowns for Shanghai’s 25 million residents, the city government is gradually regaining control of the situation. As of Thursday, May 5, the city was reporting 4,466 daily cases, compared with more than 27,000 in mid-April. Officially, only 2.54 million people are subject to the most drastic restrictions. But in reality, many residents of theoretically liberated areas still do not have the right to leave their homes. Activity picks up gradually, starting with strategic industrial companies.
March 10: Bulk PCR testing
About ten days after a new epidemic emerged in Shanghai, I noticed the first worrying signs. On my way to the office, Xiangyang Park is cordoned off and large white tents have been erected, indicating that mass PCR testing will begin soon. With 75 cases that day, the situation is not alarming. But in line with the zero-Covid strategy employed in China, Shanghai is tackling the problem head-on: the city is quarantining thousands of people who are positive for Covid-19, contact cases and even contact cases of contact cases. On March 12, Shanghai announced it would close schools as a precaution and imposed a test on anyone leaving the city.
March 16: the first confinement
While other cities locked down earlier, Shanghai, with 25 million inhabitants the world’s largest container port and Chinese financial metropolis, wants to believe in his targeted approach. But the Omicron variant is progressing: from 200 cases on March 15th we go to a thousand on March 22nd. In mid-March, Shanghai decided to lock down the hardest-hit districts for forty-eight hours, the time to test the population twice. In my apartment in the old center, the news is announced at 7 a.m. on loudspeakers waved by volunteers from the Residents’ Committee, a local Communist Party organization. The residents, young wealthy Chinese, emigrants and old Shanghainese, march through the alleys of the red brick houses to the adjacent square where tents have been set up.
Also read: Article reserved for our Covid-19 subscribers in China: In Shanghai, the authorities continue to tighten their policy of maximum exit restrictions
As the forty-eight hours passed, the residence’s two exits were still closed: one guarded by an anti-theft device and the other by several bao’an (“peacekeepers”), generally engaged in precarious contracts. Shanghai has recruited thousands to control the city. On the third day of our detention, which was to last only two, tempers flared for lack of information: There were a few beatings with guards, I was told when I arrived there. The police are already there. Finally, the residents’ committee lets us go shopping nearby.
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