As concerns mount about the economic impact of China’s “zero-COVID” plan, the country went into its most widespread lockdown in the last two years on Monday to perform mass testing and manage an outbreak in Shanghai.
A metropolis with a population of 26 million, Shanghai was able to handle minor epidemics with restricted lockdowns of housing complexes and businesses where the virus was circulating in the past. Nevertheless, China’s two-phased citywide lockdown will be the most comprehensive since Wuhan in central China, when the virus was first found at the end of 2019 and its 11 million residents were initially quarantined for 76 days in early 2020. Since then, millions of people have been held in a state of siege.
Lockdown stages
From Monday through Friday, Shanghai’s Pudong financial area and its surrounding regions will be closed to the public while mass testing begins, the city’s authorities stated. On Friday, the second stage of the lockdown will begin with a five-day lockdown of the city’s core region west of the Huangpu River.
Shanghai residents have been subjected to several COVID-19 testing in the last week, with their housing complexes surrounded by plastic barriers in blue and yellow. Among the enterprises that have already shut down is Shanghai’s Disneyland amusement park. In addition, Tesla is halting manufacturing at its Shanghai facility, according to reports in the media.
To guarantee that there is no communication with the external world, people will be expected to remain at home and deliveries will be placed at checkpoints. All non-essential offices and enterprises will be shut down, and public transportation will be halted. On Sunday, there were reports of panic-buying, with grocery shelves bare of food, drink, and home essentials. Workers in hazardous suits manned checks as further barricades were constructed in communities on Monday. A few personnel, notably stock market traders, were planning to remain in a COVID-19 “bubble” throughout the lockdown, which lasted for many days.
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