Shanghai lockdown: city’s gateway status under threat as passenger flights and air freight are grounded at Pudong’s airport amid Covid-19 tests

The gates to the world’s largest consumer market have been temporarily left ajar, as a rolling lockdown to contain Shanghai’s worst Covid-19 outbreak paralysed one of China’s busiest airports and left the biggest container port running at less than its full capacity.

A mere 28 flights took off and landed as of 5pm on Tuesday at the Pudong airport, which used to handle 892 flights on a typical day in 2021, according to VariFlight Technology. Air freight may stop altogether by Thursday, as haulage trucks are barred from approaching the airport, said the official of an Asian airline.

The Yangshan deep water port and the Waigaoqiao harbour, located in the area east of the Huangpu River under lockdown since Monday, are operating at half their capacity amid strict quarantine and testing procedures to snuff out the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the disease.

“Passenger and cargo flows have been severely impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, but the bigger question is how long the lockdown would last,” said Xiong Hao, an assistant general manager at Shanghai Jump International Shipping. “After all, Shanghai is the transport hub where millions of people and tons of goods flow in and out of the mainland via the ports.”

Shanghai, with 25 million residents, has recorded 26,000 Covid-19 cases since the start of March, adding more infections in four weeks than it did in two years. Even though most of the confirmed cases were asymptomatic, local authorities took no chances, unexpectedly locking down Pudong on Monday to mass test the area’s residents.