by Guido Santevecchi
The city, which is now the economic heart of the country, has seen 24,952 infections, low numbers but one that has triggered a harsh lockdown
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BEIJING How serious is the situation in Shanghai? Coronavirus cases due to the Omicron variant continue to rise and risk overwhelming the zerotolerance policy for Covid19 to which China is anchored. The health crisis in Shanghai could tear a hole in the dam of political stability: that is the dilemma for the megalopolis authorities and the central government.
The climate of insecurity was compounded by the US decision to allow the voluntary repatriation of nonessential personnel from the US Consulate in Shanghai, and the State Department advised American citizens to reconsider any travel to China due to arbitrary restrictions. Beijing’s Foreign Ministry protested Washington’s slanderous stance on our pandemic prevention policy.
Today in Shanghai, 24,952 infections were identified, of which 1,006 were symptomatic (proven by swabs taken on Saturday April 9). The cases detected in this wave, which began in slow motion in the megalopolis at the end of February, amount to about 120,000 out of a population of about 26 million inhabitants: therefore still relatively low numbers and about 95% of the positives are cataloged as asymptomatic (even if apparently moderate symptoms are included in the category). In any other country it would be a situation to be monitored without drastic decisions.
In Shanghai, however, the reaction was contradictory. Now done with a lockdown that takes us back to the darkest days in Wuhan, between January and April 2020. But just days before everything was shut down, authorities gave reassurances that Shanghai would not be stopped to avoid hitting the heart of financial and Trade activities of the economy (its GDP accounts for about 4.8% of the Chinese total). Even Xi Jinping had asked in midMarch to take account of the ailing economy, and Shanghai Party leaders had felt emboldened to resist and try to limit the damage. Only blocks of flats where positive cases had surfaced were quarantined, and the rest of the city went on with normal life. Then, given that the Omicron variant is spreading very quickly, as we have learned dramatically in the West, there was the counterorder. The zerotolerance line aimed at preventing contagion from the territory was also imposed in Shanghai.
On March 28, a lockdown was imposed that should have been limited to two short periods: four days in Pudong (the area east of the Huangpu River, which flows through the city); and four more in Puxi (West). But the smear campaigns across the population showed that Omicron is silent: Shanghai found itself shut down to the bitter end and incredibly unprepared for the emergency. The entire population has been subjected to repeated rounds of swabs and the numbers continue to rise.
With no confidence quarantine at home for the positives, tens of thousands of people were concentrated in logistically and hygienically inadequate makeshift arrangements like those for the Expo: middleclass citizens found themselves in enormous trinkets, again in large spaces, with little support; Parents were separated from young children. The people locked in the house had run out of food supplies and the central supply system could not solve the problem: We cannot make the last hundred meters for deliveries, the deputy mayor admitted and asked for understanding for the delays. But the Chinese have an atavistic fear of food shortages from the famines that have plagued the country for centuries; Also, the Chinese are used to fresh vegetables, not canned ones, and in a dynamic city like Shanghai, many aren’t even used to cooking at home. As sanitation in the city tightened, daily supplies to 26 million people slowed. No one dies or starves at home in Shanghai, but the psychological factor has created great tension.
Testimonies and videos of protests rained down on social networks, attempts to break the plumbing lines to go outside and go shopping, angry and angry chants rang out from the windows at night: We want to work, we want to be freed, drones with loudspeakers fly over the Neighborhoods and invite you to calm down, they tell you to close the windows and wait. To ease the pressure, quarantine centers have opened in other cities, even hundreds of kilometers from Shanghai. At least two major Shanghai hospitals dedicated to caring for the elderly have filtered reports of hidden deaths, with doctors and staff overwhelmed by the emergency. The government responded by sending an army of medical workers from other provinces to the metropolis: at least 38,000 doctors and nurses dedicated to strengthening health facilities and manufacturing tampons. When does the state of emergency end? The authorities have promised an easing of the lockdown conditions: a new round of tampons will go off for everyone and the shared apartments, which do not register infections for 14 days, will be released. But 14 days in a metropolis like Shanghai are extremely long.
April 10, 2022 (Change April 10, 2022 | 16:25)
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