Shanghai plans to relax some lockdown restrictions with precise zoning after new round of mass Covid-19 testing

Authorities in Shanghai will conduct a new round of mass Covid-19 testing, the results of which will help to determine new zoning classifications in the city
The city’s residential compounds, villages and business locations will be classified into three types of zones: lockdown, control and precaution

Coronavirus China

Iris Dengin Shenzhen

Published: 1:16pm, 9 Apr 2022

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Shanghai will relax some of its most draconian lockdown restrictions, as the city of 25 million residents prepares for a new round of mass Covid-19 testing after daily infections climbed to 23,624 new cases on Saturday.

The number of symptomatic infections rose to 1,015 from 824 cases on Friday, according to local health authorities. That marked the eighth consecutive day of record daily cases, reflecting the pressure on local authorities to contain the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

The local government will conduct a new round of citywide testing, according to Vice-Mayor Zong Ming, without elaborating on a specific timeline. Based on the results, the city’s residential compounds, villages and business locations will be classified into three zones – lockdown, control and precaution – with different levels of risks and corresponding measures.

“We will implement differentiated policies with the zoning and grading, based on the analysis and results of the nucleic acid tests,” Zong said at a press briefing on Saturday.

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Under the city’s new zoning strategy, residents living in locked-down areas will remain barred from leaving their homes, while those in control zones will be allowed to move around within their compounds.

People in the precautionary zones will be able to move around these areas. Certain essential businesses in these areas will be allowed to reopen, with limitations on the number of customers.

Zoning of areas will be adjusted based on subsequent developments in the city’s Covid-19 infection situation, according to authorities.

Shanghai’s Pudong district, located east of the Huangpu River, announced on April 1 a similar zoning plan, which classified most of its subdistricts into lockdown and control zones. The latest plan announced by authorities on Saturday will divide the city into even smaller grids, which would allow for more precise zoning.

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The new strategy is expected to help ease supply disruptions, enabling the local government and businesses to meet the city’s severe shortage of food and other daily life essentials since authorities started enforcing a two-stage lockdown on March 28.

Supermarkets, e-commerce warehouses and pharmacies in lockdown and controlled zones will be able to partly resume operations to deal with online orders, according to Gu Jun, a commerce official of Shanghai. Only nine e-commerce warehouses and 17 supermarkets across Shanghai resumed business on Friday.

Shanghai is also expected to allow employees in the express package delivery sector and other essential services to come back to work, according to Gu.

Meanwhile, authorities have stepped up their policing of fake news, unsubstantiated reports and rumours via social media networks, with the cyberspace administrator shutting down four WeChat discussion groups.

The citywide lockdown, which has entered its second week, caused disruption in the delivery of cooked food and fresh produce. Some residents were forced to conduct barter transactions to get supplies of everyday essentials.

Deserted roads are seen in Shanghai, which is under an extended Covid-19 lockdown, on April 7, 2022. Photo: Bloomberg

Shanghai’s citywide lockdowns have shuttered tens of thousands of businesses from corner grocers to multinational investors like Walt Disney’s Shanghai Disneyland resort and Tesla’s Gigafactory 3.

Nio, whose shares are traded in New York and Hong Kong, became the latest to halt its assembly of electric cars, citing disruptions and suspensions among the vendors in its supply chain in Jilin province, Shanghai and Jiangsu province, according to its blog on Wechat.

Other major Chinese cities have also adopted zoning and grading methods in line with the central government’s zero-Covid-19 policy.

Nio’s electric vehicles on the production line during an event at the automaker’s factory in Hefei of Anhui province on Wednesday, April 7, 2021. Photo: Bloomberg

Chinese tech hub Shenzhen, in southern Guangdong province, on Saturday put a residential community in Nanshan district under lockdown after a confirmed Covid-19 case was reported in the area, which is home to the Shenzhen High-Tech Industrial Park. Before this move, Shenzhen had no new Covid-19 case since April 3.

Authorities of Guangzhou ordered all 18 million residents across the 11 districts of Guangdong’s provincial capital to test for Covid-19, after finding two confirmed infections and one asymptomatic case on Friday, according to a broadcast on state television.