Coronavirus: Shanghai declares 7,565 areas ‘low-risk,’ easing lockdowns in selected zones as symptomatic cases dip after six rounds of tests

Residents in ‘low-risk’ areas, with zero cases for 14 days, are allowed to move about and shop
Chinese economist Lang Hsien-ping said his elderly mother died after waiting in vain at a hospital for her Covid-19 test result before she could receive treatment

Coronavirus China

Daniel Renin Shanghai

Published: 11:20am, 11 Apr 2022

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Shanghai’s authorities have relaxed the citywide lockdowns in China’s financial and commercial centre, as they reclassified the city’s 16 districts according to the severity of the Covid-19 outbreak after six rounds of mass testing.

A total of 7,565 areas have been declared “precautionary zones”, the lowest-risk category, because they recorded zero cases of the Omicron variant over the past 14 days, the Shanghai government’s Deputy Secretary-General Gu Honghui said during a Monday press briefing, without revealing the number of residents living in those areas.

Jing’an district in Puxi, west of the Huangpu River that cuts through Shanghai, has been declared low risk, as was Jingshan, according to pamphlets distributed to residents notifying them of their freedom to move about. Pudong, on the river’s eastern bank, remains under lockdown.

The relaxation, following a weekend announcement of the reclassification by Vice-Mayor Zong Ming, comes as the number of people with symptoms of the Covid-19 disease dipped to 914 on Monday, from more than 1,000 every day over the weekend.

Shanghai rewrote the city’s daily Covid-19 infections record for the 10th straight day with 26,087 new cases on Monday, bringing the city’s total to 205,000 since March 1.

A delivery man passes by barriers set up to lock down a community in Shanghai on March 30, 2022. Photo: AP

The vast majority of the cases were asymptomatic, and health authorities have released more than 11,000 people from quarantine after they turned negative. No one had died in the current wave of the Covid-19 outbreak since March, even through the city recorded more cases in a month than the sum of the previous two years.

Still, that was no comfort for Chinese Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, who has been stationed in Shanghai for more than a week to oversee the anti-pandemic fight, or for local authorities, described by China’s top epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan as being “unprepared” for the latest Omicron outbreak.

The interior view of a makeshift hospital converted from the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai on April 9, 2022. Photo: Xinhua

Infections surged even after Shanghai’s 25 million residents were all confined to their homes to undergo multiple rounds of citywide mass testing almost on a daily basis.

“Greater efforts must be made to save time and improve efficiency of testing,” Sun told local officials during a visit to the city’s data centre on Sunday, according to the state news agency Xinhua. “High-risk people must be uncovered as soon as possible and be transferred for quarantine.”

Local residents complained of over-the-top measures enforced by the authorities, which hampered the deliveries of food and daily essentials, gummed up supply chains, forcibly separated children from their parents and even led to the brutal killings of pets.

Chinese economist Lang Hsien-ping’s elderly mother died after waiting for four hours in vain at a hospital for her Covid-19 test result before she could receive treatment, according to his social media blog on Monday.

01:27

Shanghai’s citywide Covid-19 lockdown spurs race to stockpile food across China

On April 5, the municipal government reversed an earlier plan to end an eight-day, two-phase shutdown of Pudong and Puxi, leaving the whole city locked down.

For now, a citywide lockdown remains in most parts of Shanghai. The elevated highway in one of China’s largest population centres, usually choked with bumper-to-bumper commuter traffic during rush hour, is empty. All shopping centres, public places and businesses are closed, and all residents – except medical staff, health officials and emergency workers – are homebound.

Some banks including Standard Chartered and Citigroup have made exceptional arrangements to allow treasury staff to trade from home. The Shanghai Stock Exchange instructed compliance officers and technicians to sleep on site to keep the world’s second-largest capital market humming. All brokerages have closed their public galleries, confining traders to transact online from home.

‘Just in time’ morphs into ‘just in case’ as Covid-19 cuts supply chains

The Lujiazui finance area and the Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park are already operating as closed loops, requiring staff to work and live on site, with zero contact with outsiders.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China’s largest chip maker, is operating in a closed loop, while Tesla announced a suspension of its Gigafactory 3 last week.

In Jing’an district, a small number of groceries and supermarkets have reopened for business since the area was declared low risk, but with limits on the number of customers who can be served, according to a local government official.

“There is still a long way to go before the pandemic is brought under control and for life and business to return to normal,” said Yin Ran, a property and angel investor in Shanghai. “We expect the lockdown to be fully lifted at the end of April.”