Shanghai’s leaders on Sunday announced the city will be subject to new staggered lockdowns by district as China faces a new outbreak of Covid-19.
The city of 26 million will begin enforcing restrictions and mass testing Monday morning in areas east of the Huangpu River, according to the New York Times. The restrictions and testing in that area will go on until April 1, at which point restrictions and testing will begin in districts west of the river in an effort to test the city’s entire population.
Some neighborhoods that have emerged as Covid-19 hotspots have already been under lockdown for more than a week. Residents in those neighborhoods have at times had difficulty accessing daily necessities, including medical supplies, the paper reported.
Citizens who are not involved in providing essential and public services will not be allowed to leave their neighborhoods under the new lockdowns, while nonessential businesses and transportation will close operations, according to the report.
Shanghai stands apart from other Chinese cities, in that it has used “grid screening” throughout the pandemic, rather than full-scale citywide lockdowns. The city has previously enforced lockdowns of housing compounds and workplaces hit by the virus.
The most recent measure is China’s most extensive Covid-19 lockdown since the virus was first detected in Wuhan in 2019, according to the Associated Press.
Shanghai recorded 3,500 new cases of infection on Sunday, the AP reported. However, all but 50 of the cases were asymptomatic. China counts asymptomatic cases separately from “confirmed cases,” a measure that only takes into account people who are sick.
The city has performed more than 30 million P.C.R. tests over the last five days.
Across China, 1,219 new “confirmed cases” were recorded nationwide on Sunday, with more than 1,000 of those cases in the northeastern province of Jilin. Two deaths were reported in Jilin on March 20, the first deaths from Covid-19 in mainland China in a year, according to Chinese officials. However, many experts suspect the country has not been honest about its case counts and deaths from the virus as it touts its “zero-tolerance” approach to Covid-19.
The new lockdowns 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 said Sunday.