Shanghai tomorrow is to lock down a district of 2.7 million people to conduct mass testing for COVID-19, city authorities said yesterday, as the Chinese metropolis struggles to fully emerge from punishing curbs.
The city eased many restrictions last week, after confining most of its 25 million residents to their homes since March as China battled its worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years.
However, the lockdown was never fully lifted, with hundreds of thousands in China’s biggest city still restricted to their homes and multiple residential compounds put under fresh stay-at-home orders.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The southwestern district of Minhang, home to 2.7 million people, would be placed under “closed management” tomorrow morning and all residents would be tested, district authorities said in a social media post.
“The closure would be lifted after the samples have been collected,” they said, without giving a specific time or date.
The statement also did not say what measures would be imposed if any district residents test positive.
Under China’s “zero COVID-19” approach, all positive cases are isolated and close contacts — often including the entire building or community where they live — are made to quarantine.
Shanghai reported nine new local infections yesterday, with none of them in Minhang.
The district’s announcement sparked fear among some social media users that the lockdown could be prolonged if any cases are found.
“You need to clarify if [the lockdown] will really be lifted after samples are collected,” one person wrote.
“If there are abnormal results after the tests, what will you do? Continue the lockdown?” another asked.
The city government denied rumours that the rest of the city would lock down again in phases, saying that while individual areas had issued confinement orders, the city as a whole was “gradually resuming normal production and life.”
The lockdown in Shanghai — a major global shipping hub — had threatened to pile further pressure on already-strained international supply chains.
However, the city has slowly come back to life in the past few days.
Commuters are back on subways and buses as people return to working in their offices, while residents have gathered in parks and along the city’s waterfront.
However, others are chafing under continued restrictions, with residents in one compound in Xuhui District protesting against the rules this week.
The rivalry between Asia’s two biggest countries has extended into outer space. After India’s landing of its Chandrayaan-3 rover on the moon last month — becoming the first country to put a spacecraft near the lunar south pole and breaking China’s record for the southernmost lunar landing — a top Chinese scientist has said claims about the accomplishment are overstated. Ouyang Ziyuan (歐陽自遠), lauded as the father of China’s lunar exploration program, told the Chinese-language Science Times newspaper that the Chandrayaan-3 landing site, at 69 degrees south latitude, was nowhere close to the pole, defined as between 88.5 and 90 degrees. On Earth,
A cat wearing a black and yellow security vest strolls nonchalantly past security guards lined outside a Philippine office building waiting to receive instructions for their shift. Conan, a six-month-old stray, joined the security team of the Worldwide Corporate Center in the capital, Manila, several months ago. He is one of the lucky moggies unofficially adopted by security guards across the city, where thousands of cats live on the street. While the cats lack the security skills of dogs — and have a tendency to sleep on the job — their cuteness and company have endeared them to bored security guards working 12-hour
NEW ENERGY: Mark Lambert, the next deputy assistant secretary for China and Taiwan, is to head China House, which has been criticized for slowing policymaking Washington on Friday named veteran diplomat Mark Lambert as its top China policy official at the US Department of State at a time when ties between the two strategic rivals remain fraught over issues including Taiwan, trade and US curbs on Beijing’s access to US technology. Lambert is to be deputy assistant secretary for China and Taiwan, and is to head the Office of China Coordination, informally known as China House, the State Department said in a release. The division was created late last year to unify and better coordinate China policies across regions and issues, but has faced criticism for adding
TEMPORARY HITCH? Biden said the US ‘cannot ... allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted,’ and he expects House Speaker McCarthy to come up with a solution The threat of a federal government shutdown suddenly lifted late on Saturday as US President Joe Biden signed a temporary funding bill to keep agencies open with little time to spare after the US Congress rushed to approve the bipartisan deal. The package dropped aid to Ukraine, a White House priority opposed by a growing number of Republican lawmakers, but increased federal disaster assistance by US$16 billion, meeting Biden’s full request. The bill would fund the US government until Nov. 17. After chaotic days of turmoil in the US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy abruptly abandoned demands for steep spending cuts