Parts of Shanghai return to Covid lockdown as Beijing district shuts entertainment venues
Shanghai and Beijing went back on fresh Covid-19 alert on Thursday after parts of China’s largest economic hub started imposing new lockdown restrictions while the most populous district in the Chinese capital shut entertainment venues.
Both cities had eased widespread Covid curbs recently after a decline in new cases. However, the country has stuck with a “dynamic zero-Covid” policy aimed at shutting down transmission chains as soon as possible.
The sprawling Minhang district in Shanghai, home to more than 2 million people, said on Thursday it will conduct nucleic acid tests for all residents on June 11 and ordered residents to stay home during the period.
Several other street-level government authorities in other districts of the city have also issued notices saying residents will be subject to two days of confinement and another 12 days of rigorous testing starting from Thursday.
According to notices issued for at least three neighbourhoods, residents must stay indoors until Saturday, and complete five rounds of compulsory tests ending on June 23.
Many of these were in the central district of Xuhui, where green fences and red wooden boards have sprung up over the past week, barricading residents in and triggering fresh public anger.
A Shanghai government media outlet The Paper said one of the Xuhui outbreaks was traced to a well known beauty parlour, the Red Rose, in the city centre which reopened on June 1 when the city-wide lockdown was eased.
Three workers there had tested positive for Covid-19, it said on Thursday. The shop had received 502 customers from 15 out of the city’s 16 districts in the past eight days, it said.
“When is this ever going to end?,” commented one Weibo user on a media report on the Red Rose. “I just want to have a normal life.”
While China’s infection rate appears very low compared with many other countries, which have now opted to live with the virus, the government has doubled down on its zero-Covid policy to protect its elderly and its medical system, and has warned that it will not tolerate any comments or actions that doubted or repudiated the policy.
