Covid-19: Shanghai Eases Lockdown Despite Mounting Deaths & New Cases

Shanghai is inching towards reopening as businesses and residents grow increasingly desperate over closures and food shortages, Agence France-Presse reported.

Shanghai, China (Getty Images)

New Delhi: Despite mounting deaths and tens of thousands of new cases, China’s largest city Shanghai further eased its weeks-long Covid-19 lockdown earlier on Wednesday.

Shanghai is inching towards reopening as businesses and residents grow increasingly desperate over closures and food shortages, Agence France-Presse reported.

Some residents are, however, furious that uneven enforcement is still leaving them trapped at home.

Shanghai, faced with China’s worst virus outbreak in two years, has confined most of its 25 million people to their homes since last month, doubling down on the Communist Party’s unrelenting zero-Covid approach.

Driven by the fast-spreading Omicron variant, the surge has thwarted official efforts to avert a pandemic rebound as over 4,00,000 infections have been reported since March.

Seven Covid-19 deaths and more than 18,000 mostly asymptomatic new cases were reported on Wednesday, confirmed the city authorities.

The authorities also announced that four million more people had been released from the strictest version of lockdown.

Some factories have resumed operations while requiring the workers to live on-site. In tune with the same, around 12 million people previously barred from leaving their homes have in the past few days been given permission to venture outdoors.

Many were, however, disappointed at being denied a taste of freedom. This came despite their housing being classified in the lowest tier of restrictions as of Wednesday.

The residents of compounds without new cases in the past 14 days can move about freely. The enforcement has, however, been uneven and many in these “precautionary areas” have complained online of being denied permission to leave their housing compounds.

Despite Shanghai’s outbreak remaining small as compared with other parts of the world, it has strained China's virus strategy and prompted rare glimpses of discontent usually wiped away by censorship.

This development takes place as China insists its unrelenting Covid approach has averted fatalities and the public health crises seen in other parts of the world.