Public transport in Shanghai partially resumed on Sunday, a sign of a gradual reopening after nearly two months of lockdown in China’s biggest city to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.
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The economic metropolis has been experiencing a tough form of curfew since April with the house ban in a large part of the city and the isolation of positive cases.
Four of the city’s 20 subway lines reopened on Sunday, as did some road transport, which authorities say form a “core network covering all central urban areas.”
People using public transport must present a negative Covid test less than 48 hours old with a “normal temperature”, they added.
Unlike other major economies, China has a strict “zero Covid” policy, which consists of isolating sources of contamination to halt the spread of the virus. However, this approach has proven difficult versus the highly transmittable Omicron variant.
As cases fall in Shanghai, authorities appear to be gradually easing restrictions and some factories have resumed operations.
From May 31, Shanghai will implement a classification system between “low,” “medium,” or “high” risk areas depending on the number of cases found there, a city health official Zhao Dandan said on Sunday.
People in “low risk” areas will be allowed to leave their homes, and “medium” or “high” risk areas will be locked down for 14 days.
The central Jing’an district was under a bell again on Sunday and its residents will undergo three rounds of testing, according to an official statement.
Restrictions remain in place in other Chinese cities, including Beijing, which has banned eating out and forced millions of people to work from home.
As of Saturday, nearly 5,000 people living in Beijing’s Nanxinyuan residential district had been moved to quarantine hotels, according to state media, after 26 new infections were detected in the past few days.
Fears now focus on how Beijing will contain the outbreak and whether it intends to take a similar approach to that in Shanghai, where the lockdown has denied many people adequate access to medical care and food.