Coronavirus: Shenzhen reopens after lockdown but controls stay in place for some

Chinese tech hub Shenzhen lifted a week-long lockdown on Monday, but part of its central business district remains closed as the southern city tries to get back to zero Covid-19 cases.

Full services have resumed on the subway and bus networks, and most businesses and factories have reopened.

“The pandemic remains serious, but the overall situation is under control,” the government said in a notice issued late on Sunday. It said virus controls would continue but would vary across different parts of the city.

Mainland China is grappling with its worst outbreak of locally transmitted cases since Wuhan in 2020. In Shenzhen, community spread of the virus has been largely contained after the city of 17.5 million was locked down for a week, but it is still recording cases. On Monday, 33 local infections and 11 asymptomatic cases were reported, most of them in the central Futian district.

The southern part of Futian, which borders Hong Kong, will remain under lockdown, with residents told to stay at home. Hong Kong is in the grip of a fifth wave of cases and has continued to report more than 10,000 daily infections in recent days.

The rest of Shenzhen started getting back to normal on Monday. Shops and restaurants are open – though numbers are limited for those dining in – and people can take public transport or enter a supermarket if they show a negative test result. Schools and early learning centres remain closed.

Liu Jie, a cybersecurity analyst who works in the hi-tech zone in Nanshan district, said he went back to the office on Monday and had gone out for lunch with colleagues. “Many people missed going to restaurants [in the past week],” he said.

But some remain confined to their homes. One resident of Futian district, who lives just a few kilometres from the Huanggang crossing on the Hong Kong border, said her area was still closed and they had not been told when the restrictions would ease. She said she had seen a drone outside her window on Monday morning, apparently checking that people were keeping to the stay-at-home order.

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The restrictions began on March 13 after an outbreak of cases in the city, with residential compounds locked down and non-essential businesses closed. Three rounds of compulsory mass testing were carried out, with medical staff going door-to-door to make sure no one avoided the screening.

But the tough measures – which have played out again and again across China as it sticks to a zero-Covid policy – took a toll on manufacturing in Shenzhen, and authorities allowed industrial parks to set up “closed loop” areas so they could resume production.

Foxconn, Apple’s key manufacturing partner for iPhones, announced it had resumed production on Wednesday. Two days later, restrictions were lifted in five districts where most of the city’s factories are located so that they could restart production.

The on-again, off-again restrictions during the pandemic have left many residents frustrated. Migrant worker Xie Yifei, who works at an electrical parts factory, said he was worried that his salary would be docked because of last week’s shutdown. He said his employer had not given any guarantee that the full salary would be paid this month, adding that his rent had just been raised.

While he can now move about most of the city, Xie said life was more difficult than it used to be. “You need to check in with your phone whenever you go to a public place and they still ask you to do the nucleic acid tests all the time,” he said.