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Citizens stand in line to take nucleic acid tests in Jing'an District of Shanghai. Xinhua News Agency/PA Images

Shanghai says 'zero-Covid' achieved but millions still in lockdown

The city of 25 million has been under heavy restrictions since early April.

SHANGHAI TODAY DECLARED it had achieved “zero-Covid” across all its districts, sparking derision on social media as millions in China’s biggest city remained under lockdown.

Confronted with its worst outbreak since the beginning of the pandemic, China – the last major economy still closed off to the world – put the city of 25 million under heavy restrictions in early April.

The government’s insistence on squashing the Omicron variant-driven outbreak prompted rare protests and angry scuffles with authorities as Shanghai residents reject the prolonged confinement and food shortages.

“All 16 districts of Shanghai have already achieved zero-Covid at the community level,” Shanghai health commission official Zhao Dandan told reporters today.

That means none of the over 1,000 new infections recorded today was detected outside of quarantined areas, city authorities said.

Vice mayor Chen Tong said Sunday that the city would gradually reopen businesses starting this week, without giving specifics.

But millions in Shanghai were still unable to leave their residential compounds today.

More than 3.8 million people officially were still under the strictest forms of lockdown in the city, according to official figures.

china-shanghai-covid-19-life-cn People shop at a supermarket in Xuhui District of Shanghai. Xinhua News Agency / PA Images Xinhua News Agency / PA Images / PA Images

China’s strategy to achieve zero Covid cases includes strict border closures, length quarantines, mass testing and rapid, targeted lockdowns.

Social media erupted in disbelief at the gap between official statements and the reality of life under an enduring lockdown.

“Since society has reached Covid-zero, why are people in Songjiang district still only allowed to go out once every two days?” a blogger on the Twitter-like Weibo asked.

“Is this a parallel universe Shanghai?” asked another.

In some areas of the city, restrictions have even been quietly tightened in recent days.

Live video broadcast this morning by Chinese media showed crowds gathering at Shanghai’s Hongqiao Railway Station as train services leaving the city resumed.

People are only allowed to leave Shanghai after receiving permission and taking multiple Covid tests.

China has shown no sign of giving up its protracted struggle to maintain zero Covid cases, despite the mounting economic costs of miserable retail, house and car sales and climbing unemployment.

Beijing is mass testing residents almost every day after a surge in cases – counted in the dozens each day but still enough to prompt tight restrictions on movement and association.

Millions of people in the capital have been ordered to work from home and transport services have been suspended as people feared a repeat of Shanghai’s lockdown chaos.

© AFP 2022

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    Mute John Munch
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    May 17th 2022, 8:32 AM

    Sure it is.

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    Mute Dave Barrett
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    May 17th 2022, 8:41 AM

    @John Munch: until the next virus is brought out of a lab.

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    Mute Tony O' Leary
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    May 17th 2022, 8:37 AM

    I really don’t get how this is going to work long term? Do they plan on having their borders closed forever or until they have more people vaccinated?

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    Mute John Murphy
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    May 17th 2022, 11:18 AM

    @Tony O’ Leary: Their plan makes no sense since long term immunity doesn’t exist against Covid.
    Unless they know something that the rest of the world doesn’t know.

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    Mute martin
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    May 17th 2022, 11:35 AM

    @Tony O’ Leary: population control

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    Mute Joe Vlogs
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    May 17th 2022, 12:16 PM

    @Tony O’ Leary: I would say they are trying to keep it out until the can finish their development of their own domestic mRNA vaccine. Their current vaccines are quite ineffective, especially against the newer strains of Covid, and there was an estimate in the FT that if Covid wasn’t contained in China up to 2 million people could die from it, given both the relative inefficacy of the domestic vaccines and also the high number of elderly who haven’t been vaccinated at all. Also, for a long time the Chinese government have basically said it was western incompetence that meant we couldn’t control the virus outbreak. To admit now that China cannot either would be an admission of failure, especially as western economies are now largely open thanks to western produced mRNA vaccines.

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    Mute White Chapel
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    May 17th 2022, 7:46 PM

    @Joe Vlogs:
    Right.. because covid has disappeared from “the west” thanks to the vaccines..
    Absolutely nothing to do with the arrival of successive waves of less potent strains of Corona virus?
    Good lad.

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