Shanghai starts China's biggest COVID-19 lockdown in 2 years
Beijing, Mar 28: China began its most extensive lockdown in two years Monday to conduct mass testing and control a growing outbreak in Shanghai as questions are raised about the economic toll of the nation's zero-COVID strategy.
China's financial capital and largest city with 26 million people, Shanghai had managed its smaller, past outbreaks with limited lockdowns of housing compounds and workplaces where the virus was spreading. But the citywide lockdown that will conducted in two phases will be China's most extensive since the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, confined its 11 million people to their homes for 76 days in early 2020.
Shanghai's Pudong financial district and nearby areas will be locked down from Monday to Friday as mass testing gets underway, the local government said. In the second phase of the lockdown, the vast downtown area west of the Huangpu River that divides the city will start its own five-day lockdown Friday.
Residents will be required to stay home and deliveries will be left at checkpoints to ensure there is no contact with the outside world. Offices and all businesses not considered essential will be closed and public transport suspended.
Already, many communities within Shanghai have been locked down for the past week, with their housing compounds blocked off with blue and yellow plastic barriers and residents required to submit to multiple tests for COVID-19. Shanghai's Disneyland theme park is among the businesses that closed earlier. Automaker Tesla is also suspending production at its Shanghai plant, according to media reports.
Panic-buying was reported on Sunday, with supermarket shelves cleared of food, beverages and household items. Additional barriers were being erected in neighborhoods Monday, with workers in hazmat suits staffing checkpoints.
Shanghai detected another 3,500 cases of infection on Sunday, though all but 50 were people who tested positive for the coronavirus but were not showing symptoms of COVID-19. While people who are asymptomatic can still infect others, China categorizes such cases separately from confirmed cases those in people who are sick leading to much lower totals in daily reports.
Nationwide, 1,219 new confirmed cases of domestic infection were detected on Sunday, more than 1,000 of them in the northeastern province of Jilin, along with 4,996 asymptomatic cases, the National Health Commission reported on Monday.
China has reported more than 56,000 confirmed cases nationwide this month, with the surge in Jilin accounting for most of them.
Jilin province is enforcing travel bans and partial lockdowns in several cities, including Changchun, one of the centers of the Chinese auto industry. Although the province has seen more than 1,000 new confirmed cases per day, prevention and control measures taken there do not appear to have been as extreme as in other places.
As has become customary, Jilin has been building pre-fabricated temporary wards to house COVID-19 patients and those under observation as suspected cases. The city of Suzhou, about an hour from Shanghai, as well as Changsha in the country's center and Shenyang in the northeast are also erecting such structures capable of housing more than 6,000 people.
China has called its long-standing zero-tolerance approach the most economical and effective prevention strategy against COVID-19.
The new measures being enforced in Shanghai aim to curb the virus spread, protect people's life and health, and achieve the dynamic zero-COVID target as soon as possible, the city's COVID-19 prevention and control office stated in an announcement Sunday evening.
That requires lockdowns and mass testing, with close contacts often being quarantined at home or in a central government facility. The strategy focuses on eradicating community transmission of the virus as quickly as possible.
While officials, including Communist Party leader Xi Jinping have encouraged more targeted measures, local officials tend to take a more extreme approach, concerned with being fired or otherwise punished over accusations of failing to prevent outbreaks.
Most recently, Hunan province, which has seen relatively few cases, ordered punishments against 19 officials for failure to vigorously consolidate anti-pandemic policies," state broadcaster CCTV reported Monday.
With China's economic growth already slowing, the extreme measures are seen as worsening difficulties hitting employment, consumption and even global supply chains. With a 21-day curfew in place for all foreigners arriving from abroad, travel between China and other countries has fallen dramatically.
On Friday, the International Air Transport Association announced it was moving its annual general meeting from Shanghai to Doha, citing continuing COVID-19 related restrictions on travel to China."
It is deeply disappointing that we are not able to meet in Shanghai as planned," IATA Director General Willie Walsh said in a news release.
Still, Shanghai's announcement of the dates when the two lockdowns would be lifted appeared to show a further refinement in China's approach. Previous citywide lockdowns had been open-ended.
Although China's vaccination rate is around 87per cent, it is considerably lower among older people.
National data released earlier this month showed that over 52 million people aged 60 and older have yet to be vaccinated with any COVID-19 vaccine. Booster rates are also low, with only 56.4per cent of people between 60-69 having received a booster shot, and 48.4per cent of people between 70-79 having received one.
Older and unvaccinated people are more likely to become seriously ill if they contract the virus.
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Ban on outsiders' entry extended in Sambhal, SP MPs barred from entering
Lucknow/Sambhal (UP) (PTI): Three Samajwadi Party parliamentarians, including its Sambhal MP, were stopped from entering the violence-hit district, as the administration on Saturday extended the ban on the entry of outsiders into Sambhal to December 10 to maintain "peace and order".
The administration's earlier ban on the entry of outsiders was to expire on Saturday.
The Samajwadi Party's Muzaffarnagar MP Harendra Malik, accompanied by its Kairana and Sambhal MPs, was stopped from entering Sambhal from Ghaziabad.
"I don't understand why we are being stopped. Are the opposition leader and the MPs so irresponsible that they can't be allowed to move within the state?" Malik said.
The party had earlier announced a 15-member delegation would visit the district to gather information about the violence that broke out over a court-ordered survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid.
Curbs under Section 163 (power to issue order in urgent cases of nuisance or apprehended danger) of the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita, set to expire on Sunday, were extended to December 31.
In a statement issued in Sambhal, District Magistrate Rajendra Pensiya said, "To maintain peace and order, the imposition of Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita in the district has been extended to December 31."
"No outsider, any social organisation or public representative can enter into the borders of the district without seeking the permission of the competent authority till December 10," he added.
Tension had been brewing in Sambhal since November 19 when the court-ordered survey of the Mughal-era mosque was carried out following claims that a Harihar temple previously stood at the site.
Violence erupted during a second survey on November 24 as protesters gathered near the mosque and clashed with security personnel, leading to stone pelting and arson. Four people died and several others were injured in the clashes. The police have denied allegations that it fired at the protesters.
The Supreme Court has since ordered the Sambhal trial court to halt proceedings in the case and its survey.
Pensiya further said, "If anyone tries to spread rumours on any group on social media, the group admin will delete the post and immediately inform the police. Cyber cafes will keep a register to enter the names of visitors. No person in Sambhal will burn effigies at public places."
Malik, who was stopped from entering Sambhal, further said, "Our delegation also included MPs Zia-ur-Rehman Barq (Sambhal) and Iqra Hasan (Kairana). What can we do? The government is acting in an autocratic manner."
Sambhal MP Barq has been booked in connection with the November 24 violence for "provocative acts".
In Moradabad, Samajwadi Party MP Ruchi Veera's residence was surrounded by cops to prevent her from travelling to Sambhal.
Leader of Opposition in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Mata Prasad Pandey, who was to lead the delegation, told reporters outside his Lucknow residence that Home Secretary Sanjay Prasad called him and requested him to not visit Sambhal.
Pandey is sitting on a dharna in Lucknow.
"The Sambhal district magistrate also called and told me that the ban on the entry of outsiders had been extended. I will now visit the party office and discuss the issue before deciding on our next action," he said.
"The government perhaps wanted to prevent me in order to hide its wrongdoings in Sambhal as our visit would have exposed its mistakes," he added.
Heavy security has been deployed outside Pandey's residence since Friday.
The Samajwadi Party had postponed an earlier visit after assurances from the director general of police about a fair investigation into the violence.
Congress state chief Ajay Rai earlier told PTI that a party delegation would visit Sambhal on December 2.
