Shanghai will begin to gradually reopen businesses such as shopping malls and beauty salons in the financial center of China Starting Monday, after weeks of strict confinement due to outbreaks of Covid-19while the rest of the country struggled to curb the resistant variant Omicron.
Nearly shut down for more than six weeks, Shanghai is tightening restrictions in some areas that it hopes will mark a final push in its campaign against the virus, which has angered and exhausted residents of China’s largest and most cosmopolitan city.
Shopping malls, department stores and supermarkets will begin to resume store operations and allow customers to shop “in an orderly manner,” while beauty salons and vegetable markets will reopen with limited capacity, Vice Mayor Chen said. Tong at a news conference on Sunday.
He gave no details on the pace or scope of the reopenings, and many residents of the city of 25 million people reacted skeptically.
“Who are you lying to? We can’t even leave our compound. You can open, no one can go,” said a Twitter-like Weibo user from China, whose IP was shown to be from Shanghai.
During Shanghai’s lockdown, residents have mostly confined themselves to shopping for necessities, with normal online shopping largely suspended due to a shortage of dispatchers.
And while stylists have been cutting hair on the street or in open areas of housing complexes, residents who have recently been able to leave their homes for short walks or grocery shopping are generally looking more disheveled than usual.
In a hopeful sign, the subway operator in Shanghai has started testing trains on its vast network in preparation for reopening, a local government media outlet reported, but gave no indication of when it will do so.
Shanghai residents have been frustrated by unclear or inconsistent rules as the city takes tentative steps to ease its policy.
extraordinary focus
The strict policy of China The fight against Covid has put hundreds of millions of people in dozens of cities under restrictions of varying degrees, in an attempt to eliminate the spread of the disease.
The restrictions are wreaking havoc on the world’s second-largest economy and rattling global supply chains, even as most countries try to return to normal life despite ongoing infections.
New bank lending hit its lowest level in nearly four-and-a-half years in April as the pandemic rattled the economy and weakened demand for credit, central bank data showed on Friday.
The Asian Football Confederation said on Saturday that China withdrew from hosting the final of the 2023 Asian Cup due to Covid, the latest in a wave of sporting event cancellations by China and sparking speculation on social media that its zero policy could persist well into next year.
China managed to keep Covid at bay after it was discovered in Wuhan in late 2019, but has struggled to contain the highly infectious Omicron variant. The World Health Organization said last week that China’s approach was “not sustainable”.
Still, China is expected to maintain its policy at least until the ruling congress. communist partywhich is historically in the autumn, where the president Xi Jinping He is preparing to secure a third term that already breaks precedents.
Despite the interruptions, no senior Chinese official has spoken publicly against a policy of Covid-19 that Beijing defends as a lifeline.
In Beijing, where restaurants have closed for dinner, several districts on Sunday extended work-from-home guidance and authorities announced three more days of daily tests massive for most residents.
Beijing said it found 55 new cases in the 24 hours to 07:00 GMT on Sunday, 10 of which were outside the quarantined areas. The city strives to eradicate community infections.
