COVID-19 Returns to Home Base in China

"While the majority of G20 countries are exiting pandemic-related lockdowns, China appears to be stuck with its old tool box of zero tolerance and draconian measures to fight COVID."

"In addition to the strain on business, the population seems less willing to put up with lockdowns, as more and more erratic local policies erode citizens' confidence in their local administrations."

Jon Wuttke, president, European Union 
Chamber of Commerce in China

Tests take place behind the barriers of a makeshift Covid centre in Shanghai earlier this week  Reuters

 

Shanghai, China's financial engine with its 26-million-srong population has never encountered a need previously for a mass COVID lockdown. Three days ago authorities ruled there would be no shut down of the city in reflection of its huge economic importance to the Chinese economy. Instead the focus was on more targeted solutions, to seal off residential towers and manufacturing plants where outbreaks had been occurring.

Until Wu Fan. one of a panel of expert COVID advisers, informed a city briefing of recent mass testing that discovered 'large scale' infections throughout the entire city. "Containing the large scale outbreak in our city is very important because, once infected people are put under control, we have blocked transmission", he explained.

 

Chinese authorities believe in the efficacy of large-scale responses to even relatively small breakouts of COVID and its variants. Where its zero-COVID policy has fairly well shut off its borders for the past two years from outside 'influences. The introduction of more infectious variants such as Omicron has led some to question the strategy of mass testing, lockdowns and reliance on domestic vaccine development.

 

Now, in lock-step with China's COVID-aversive reactions, the financial hub of Shanghai went into lockdown Monday with the determined purpose of quelching its COVID-19 problem. The sudden decision was announced on Sunday by local authorities; the city was to be divided in half, with mass testing, closure of businesses and confining millions of people to their homes to take place first in one half of the city, then the other, as the first half reopens.

 

Police control access to a tunnel leading to the locked-down Pudong district of Shanghai, amid efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19 in China's financial capital, March 28, 2022. HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty

This reaction to the discovery of widespread infections must seem puzzling to the 26 million people in the city, given that the epidemic has been largely asymptomatic. The lockdown and its implications arriving when most nations in the West have moved on to abandoning COVID lockdowns and restrictions  to move toward an acceptance of the virus's existence.

 

Shanghai authorities Monday locked down areas east of the Huangpu River, an area where its financial district and industrial parks are located. The four-day lockdown shifts to the second half of the city in the west then, for another four days. During which time testing is to be conducted on residents barred from leaving their homes.

 

Public transport is suspended and private cars forbidden from the roads. tunnels and bridges linking the two halves of the city have been closed off; roads leading out of Shanhai have been blocked. A negative  COVID test is required for anyone wishing to leave in an emergency. Residents of the city responded to the orders in a panic of stocking up on food and related supplies to the point where supermarket shelves were emptied.

 

Shanghai residents line up to buy eggs from a vendor next to a market in Yangpu district, in Shanghai, China, as the city is shut down in two staggered phases to limit the spread of COVID-19, March 28, 2022. HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty

 

Staff of financial institutions were instructed on short notice to return to offices before the lockdown and to expect to sleep over nightly until the lockdown is lifted. Linked foreign businesses have viewed the situation from the outside with concern. In Hong Kong, over a million cases of COVID erupted in the city that had been largely free of the virus in the past two years.

 

The highest number of cases recorded anywhere in the world surfaced in Hong Kong in early March where close to 900 cases per 100,000 residents was tabulated. Deaths of close to 300 daily surged earlier in the month in Hong Kong. Reflective of low vaccination rates among the elderly. China's home-grown vaccines, as it happens, have a low efficacy rate. 

 

Medical staff walk in front of barriers of an area under lockdown in Shanghai on Friday. (Aly Song/Reuters)