Wednesday, March 27

Shanghai comes back to life after two months of confinement


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Shanghai slowly came back to life on Wednesday after authorities eased strict anticovid restrictions which involved a two-month lockdown and dealt a heavy blow to the Chinese economy.

In recent days some measures had already been relaxed due to a strong decrease in infections, but the population could only go out in the best of cases a few hours a day, if they lived in a neighborhood without infected. On Wednesday morning, residents were able to return to the offices, scanning a few QR codes to prove they did not have covid. The subway and public transport were working again.

Locals gathered in small groups to talk in the park and workers from shops and markets cleaned their shops and prepared their shelves waiting to receive customers again. “This is the moment we have been waiting for a long time,” the government celebrated. municipal of Shanghai on social networks.

However, the full return to normality was still not complete and more than half a million people remain under heavy restrictions, according to the authorities.

Shopping malls, supermarkets, pharmacies and beauty salons can only work at 75% of its capacity. Gyms and cinemas are still mostly closed and the reopening of schools will be done on a case-by-case basis. But after two months immersed in silence, the city returned to recover some stamps of normality.

The towering yellow fences surrounding the residential buildings were removed Tuesday, allowing some curious onlookers to take their first steps into a new freedom. And the famous historical artery of bundleon the banks of the river Huangpu that crosses the city, regained a certain life with inhabitants impatient to take pictures.

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Chen Yin, who works in e-commerce, will continue to work from home but will take advantage of this relaxation to take a long walk in the fresh air with her two-year-old son. “We should have been free from the beginning, so don’t expect me to be deeply appreciative,” she told AFP.

The confinement of the largest city in China was a blow to its population. Despite the vertiginous increase in positive cases in March, the municipal government initially ruled out a lockdown, arguing the importance of Shanghai for the economy. But the authorities backed down in early April and locked down the entire city. Some inhabitants had already been locked up since before that date. During this time, many were upset by the problems of catering of fresh products and access to health care not linked to covid.

Shanghai’s lockdown is the second longest in China since the start of the pandemic. In 2020, the one practiced in Wuhan, the first city affected by the virus, lasted 76 days.

After more than two years of the pandemic, China is the only major world economy that persists in its “zero covid” strategy consisting of seeking the total eradication of the virus in its territory through severe restrictions. This strategy, especially when applied in a business hub like Shanghai, has damaged the country’s economy, undermining production, limiting consumption and significantly disrupting supply chains.

“The task of accelerating the social and economic recovery it becomes more and more urgent“recognized the Shanghai municipal government. Although the lifting of these measures will allow businesses and factories to resume activity, there are fears that the recovery will not be immediate.

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“I definitely have concerns, things are out of your control… You can’t know with the pandemic,” said Chen Ribin, a cafe owner. «He came in April, but nobody can tell you if he will not come back in July or August (…) We can only go step by step. I think we’ll be late two or three months in returning to the business levels of before«, he pointed out.

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