The financial hub of China, Shanghai will witness the biggest and most extensive lockdown starting this Monday to curtail the rapidly surging cases of coronavirus in the city. The city will undergo extensive lockdown to control the outbreak as well as meet the criteria of “Zero-Covid” strategy.
The financial hub of China and the largest city comprising over 26 million people will be undergoing a citywide lockdown starting from Monday.
This is said to be the most extensive lockdown to take place in the country since the pandemic began in Wuhan, where the first case was detected in the last days of 2019. More than 11 million people were forced to be confined to their homes for 76 days to curtail the infection.
As announced by the Government of China, the lockdown will be conducted in 2 phases. The Pudong district will remain under lockdown from Monday till Friday as mass testing practices will take place in the area.
The second phase will witness the downtown area of Huangpu River being kept under lockdown for five days.
According to the reports, the lockdown will be a strict one although small and less strict lockdowns have been imposed in the past across different areas of the city to curtail coronavirus infections.
The residents are told to stay at home and the deliveries are supposed to be left at already marked checkpoints so that no contact is made with the outer world.
Public transport will remain suspended and offices and all the businesses which are not of essential type will remain closed.
The announcement of the lockdown resulted in panic buying across different areas of Shanghai. Supermarkets saw an overwhelming number of people storing food and other essential supplies.
3500 new cases were detected of coronavirus in Shanghai on Sunday. Most of the patients were asymptomatic and did not show any symptoms of coronavirus.
1219 new cases were confirmed across China, about 1000 were from Jilin, a province located on the northeast side of the country. 4996 new asymptomatic cases were reported by the national health commission here on Monday.
China has witnessed a sudden surge in the cases of coronavirus, just this month it reported 56000 confirmed coronavirus cases out of which the majority belonged to Jilin.
Jilin has also undergone partial lockdowns with restrictions on travel across the cities.
The Covid-19 Prevention and Control office announced on Sunday that the new measures of Covid restrictions and lockdown measures in Shanghai are “curb the virus spread, protect people’s life and health, and achieve the dynamic zero-Covid target as soon as possible.”
