BEIJING (AP) — China began lockdown on most of its largest city, Shanghai, on Monday as a coronavirus outbreak mounted and questions rose over the economic fallout of the country’s “zero-COVID” strategy.
Shanghai’s Pudong financial district and nearby areas will go into lockdown Monday through Friday as citywide mass testing begins, the local government said. Then, in the second phase of the lockdown, Friday’s massive downtown west of the Huangpu River, which divides the city, begins its own five-day lockdown.
Residents are required to stay at home and deliveries are deposited at checkpoints to ensure no contact with the outside world. Offices and all shops not considered essential will be closed and public transport stopped.
Many communities in the city of 26 million have already been placed under lockdown and their residents are undergoing multiple tests for COVID-19. And Shanghai’s Disney theme park is among the businesses that closed earlier.
Shanghai on Sunday detected another 3,500 cases of infection, although all but 50 were people who tested positive but showed no symptoms of COVID-19. China categorizes such cases separately from “confirmed cases” – those in people who have fallen ill – resulting in much lower totals in daily reports.
China has reported more than 56,000 infections nationwide this month, with most of them stemming from a surge in northeastern Jilin province.
In response to its largest outbreak in two years, China has continued to enforce the so-called “dynamic zero-COVID” approach, calling it the most economical and effective prevention strategy against COVID-19.
That requires lockdowns and mass testing, with close contacts often quarantined at home or at a central government facility. The strategy focuses on eradicating community transmission of the virus as quickly as possible, sometimes by locking down entire cities.
While officials, including Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, have encouraged more targeted measures, local officials are inclined to take a more extreme approach amid fears of being fired or otherwise punished over allegations of failing to prevent outbreaks.
With China’s economic growth already slowing, the extreme measures are seen as deepening difficulties affecting jobs, consumption and even global supply chains.
While vaccination coverage in China is around 87%, it is significantly lower among the elderly.
National data released earlier this month showed that over 52 million people aged 60 and older have yet to be vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine. Booster rates are also low: only 56.4% of people aged 60-69 have received a booster shot, and 48.4% of people aged 70-79 have received one.