Coronavirus: Shanghai extends lockdown for areas where cases are found
- Residential areas where people have tested positive to be sealed off for another 10 days, with those nearby confined to their homes for 3 more days
- The announcement came after an official said the government had handled the outbreak poorly and that it accepted all criticism
The government announced late on Thursday that residential areas would be managed according to their Covid-19 risk, and those where people have tested positive will be sealed off for another 10 days. Residential areas located nearby that do not have cases will remain in lockdown for another three days.
Other restrictions to stay in place include a ban on dining in at restaurants, while entertainment venues will remain closed. Residents were also urged not to cross the Huangpu River, which runs through the city. The area to the west of the river will be subject to stay-at-home orders from Friday.
It came after the city of nearly 25 million people recorded another rise in cases on Thursday – the fourth day of the lockdown – with 355 locally transmitted infections and 5,298 asymptomatic local cases.
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Shanghai imposes phased lockdowns as daily Covid infection numbers surge beyond 3,000
Ma Chunlei, secretary general of the Shanghai municipal government, told reporters that the government had handled the outbreak poorly and that it accepted all criticism from residents.
“Our awareness of the highly infectious and insidious Omicron mutant strain was not sufficient, and our preparation for the significant rise in infections was not comprehensive,” he said.
“We sincerely accept your criticism and are working hard to improve it,” Ma said.
Medical resources have been strained and basic food supplies limited, prompting residents to take to social media with desperate appeals for help – including from families of patients unable to get timely dialysis or whose chemotherapy was delayed for days because they were confined to their residential areas.
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Wu Jinglei, director of Shanghai’s health commission, acknowledged that residents had found it difficult to get access to healthcare but said the system was under strain.
“The ambulance service is under tremendous pressure,” he said. “Although we have taken emergency measures to increase capacity and increased the number of emergency vehicles on duty by nearly 50 per cent and tripled the workload, we still cannot fully meet the needs of all patients.”
Wu said the commission was allocating medical resources to support dialysis for kidney-failure patients in the locked down areas. Doctors have also been urged to prescribe up to three months of required medications for their patients to reduce the need for visits.
The initial phase of the lockdown, affecting 5.7 million residents, was due to run from Monday to Friday morning this week. The second phase, affecting an area west of the Huangpu River, will start from Friday morning and run until Tuesday afternoon.
Liu Bin, deputy director of the city’s transport commission, said some subway routes and stops to the south and east of the Huangpu River would not resume as planned on Friday. Meanwhile, all the subway lines to the west of the river will be suspended.
On Thursday, 8,454 local infections were reported across China, comprising 1,803 symptomatic cases – mostly found in the northeastern Jilin province – and 6,651 asymptomatic infections, most of which were in Shanghai.
