Shanghai’s residents raced to stock up on food and essentials in bouts of panic buying after local authorities of one of China’s most densely populated urban centres made an unexpected U-turn on what had been a relatively liberal approach in containing the Covid-19 outbreak. Restaurants, supermarkets and grocery stores were packed in Puxi, as surprised residents jostled to buy fresh and frozen food in preparation for a lockdown in the residential districts west of the Huangpu River to start on Friday until April 5. Districts of Pudong east of the river - Fengxian, Jinshang, Chongming and part of Minhang - have already been sealed off since Monday,, in an exercise lasting through Friday for health officials to conduct mass testing to identify the transmission chain and snuff out the disease. “The supermarket only has a few types of vegetables and meat,” said Ren Xiaowen, a 43-year-old resident who spent half an hour in the shopping mayhem, only to return with beef, a few green vegetables and tomatoes to last her family for a week. “Everyone is behaving like robbers.” The sudden lockdowns, albeit in two phases, came as the number of infections soared in the city of 25 million residents, with more people falling victim to the highly transmissible Omicron variant in the four weeks of March than the two years since Covid-19 broke out. Shanghai had mostly eschewed the type of citywide lockdowns adopted by other Chinese cities, such as last week’s lockdown in southern China’s technopolis of Shenzhen. Its relaxed approach to handling the outbreak had mostly kept the disease at bay, until the beginning of March. Pudong, which transformed from paddy fields into a major manufacturing hub and financial centre featuring Tesla’s Gigafactory3 and the Shanghai Stock Exchange, has been mostly shut down since last week. Residential compounds in the area of 1,200 square kilometres (465 square miles) were cordoned off, while factories and offices were shut unless they operate in “closed loops,” where fully vaccinated staff are forbidden from any contact with outsiders. The Shanghai Disneyland resort in Pudong had been shut since March 21 , while Tesla’s factory stopped producing Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles two days last week , while a shortage of protective gear forced the plant into another one-day halt on Monday, according to sources. The stock exchange kept trading in Lujiazui, as technicians and compliance officers had to sleep at the bourse to keep the world’s second-largest capital market ticking. Swire to turn Zhangyuan’s shikumen into Shanghai’s Covent Garden Across the river in Puxi, local residents scrambled to prepare themselves for the inevitable. The area, featuring former concessions during colonial days, is densely populated with residents in traditional shikumen-style housing and retail stores. In Huangpu district, a 62-year-old Shanghai resident, who would only give his surname Li, got up at 6am to buy rice, but had to look through half a dozen shops across two city blocks before he could find any. In Changning district, where Amazon.com has its Shanghai base and home to China’s home-grown e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, restaurants have stopped serving dine-in customers to deter crowds, allowing only dishes to be taken away. “It’s not easy for anyone during this virus control,” said Wei Jianli, 40, who serves at a local KFC outlet operated by Yum China Holdings, adding that the fast-food restaurant required all staff to test negative for Covid-19 every two days before they start their shifts. “We are risking our lives to prepare food [for customers].” The deteriorating outbreak and the abrupt change from “relaxed” approach to draconian lockdown has led to spending binges, as residents went for their last hurrahs before sealing themselves off for four days. “I am spending [without inhibitions] today,” said Wendy Kong, 40, who lives in the Baoshan district in Puxi. “I just want to eat everything I can and drink everything I want regardless of their prices. Life is short, and there is nothing wrong in being a hedonist.”