Starting on Friday, areas to the west of the river will be locked down under the second phase, while a new round of screening will take place, according to Wu Jinglei, director of Shanghai’s health commission.

From Saturday, Shanghai residents will only be allowed to leave the city if they provide negative test results from both a nucleic acid test taken within the last 48 hours and an antigen test taken within the past 24 hours.

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Staff will check proof of negative tests at airports, docks, train stations and highways.

Wu said the extended restrictions were necessary after seeing the screening results from the first lockdown areas.

“By implementing measures in different zones, we can effectively curb community spread and achieve maximum outbreak prevention with minimum cost, and lessen the impact of the pandemic on economic and social development,” he said.

On Friday, Shanghai reported 358 local confirmed cases and 4,144 local asymptomatic infections, while China as a whole logged 1,787 local cases and 5,442 infections.

A woman only identified as Fangfang living in Putuo district said she was confident that her residential compound’s lockdown would be lifted soon because only one case had been detected after screening.

“Honestly speaking, I don’t support the whole city’s lockdown. It will hurt our economy and many small companies will go bankrupt,” she said.

“But we ordinary people won’t go out to protest against this policy. What we are concerned about is that our daily life’s necessities can be guaranteed. In reality, a number of grass-root community officials don’t serve the residents well, triggering massive dissatisfaction among the public.”

On Thursday, the Shanghai government admitted it was ill-prepared for the latest wave of Covid-19 infections and had failed to meet all the needs of people in areas under tough restrictions.

Zeng Qun, deputy head of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, said more emphasis would be placed on meeting the public’s needs, including medical emergencies.

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He said the government had asked communities to get to know their residents’ basic needs and stay in contact with medical organisations.

Shanghai is China’s financial centre and home to more than 26 million people. In a semi-annual Global Financial Centres Index report, Shanghai ranked fourth globally, after New York, London and Hong Kong.

Earlier, the Shanghai government repeatedly stressed it could not afford to entirely shut down, as the economic cost would be too great.

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Shanghai imposes phased lockdowns as daily Covid infection numbers surge beyond 3,000

Shanghai imposes phased lockdowns as daily Covid infection numbers surge beyond 3,000

But China’s health authorities said on Friday afternoon that the country would insist on the “dynamic zero-Covid” policy.

“Even though the Omicron BA.2 variant has a proportion of asymptomatic infections, it spreads fast and can produce a large number of cases in a short time, which leads to high deaths,” said Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

“An Omicron outbreak can cause severe harm to a country or a region, and it must be brought under control in a short period of time,” Wu said.

He said he was optimistic that China could achieve that goal, based on the country’s experience fighting the virus in the past two years and new knowledge gained.

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In March, China reported a total of 100,000 infections affecting most of the country’s provinces. Shanghai’s outbreak is now spreading to other areas and the northeastern province of Jilin has not completely eliminated the community spread of the virus.

“With China’s largest city closed for nine days, there will undeniably be an economic blow that will follow into the second quarter of the year,” Moody’s Analytics said on Wednesday.