China’s largest city of Shanghai is ordering mass testing Friday of all 1.3 million residents of its downtown Yangpu district and confining them to their homes at least until results are known.
China’s largest city of Shanghai is ordering mass testing Friday of all 1.3 million residents of its downtown Yangpu district and confining them to their homes at least until results are known.
The demand is an echo of measures ordered over the summer that led to a two-month lockdown of the entire city of 25 million that devastated its economy, prompting food shortages and rare confrontations between residents and the authorities.
At the start of the lockdown, authorities said it would last just days but then kept extending the deadline.
China has shown no sign of backing away from its hardline “zero-COVID” policy since a major congress of the ruling Communist Party concluded this week by awarding Xi Jinping a third five-year term in power and packed top bodies with his loyalists.
Many Chinese had hoped for a relaxation of the strict anti-COVID-19 protocols, which remain in place even while much of the rest of the world has opened up. China’s borders remain largely closed and arrivals must undergo a 10-day quarantine at a designated place.
Despite its costs, and the World Health Organization calling it unsustainable, China credits the strategy with keeping case numbers and deaths at a fraction of those in other countries.
China on Friday reported a 1,337 new cases — most of them asymptomatic — and no new deaths. Shanghai reported 11 asymptomatic cases and Tibet had one confirmed case with symptoms and five asymptomatic cases. China says it has recorded a total of 258,660 cases and 5,226 deaths since the disease was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
In a sign China’s tough measures will be maintained in the long term, Shanghai plans to build a permanent quarantine center on an island in the Huangpu River that divides the financial hub, according to the business magazine Caixin.
The 1.6 billion yuan ($221 million) project on Fuxing Island will expand existing facilities to create 3,009 isolation rooms and 3,250 beds, with construction expected to be completed in six months, Caixin said.
China’s domestically developed vaccines are considered relatively ineffective and it has refused to approve foreign brands such as Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and J&J.
Still, China wants more people to get booster shots before it relaxes its restrictions. As of mid-October, 90% of Chinese were fully vaccinated and 57% had received a booster shot.
China has relied on domestically developed vaccines, primarily two inactivated vaccines that have proven effective in preventing death and serious disease but less so than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines at stopping the spread of the disease.
Chinese authorities also have not mandated vaccination — entering an office building or other public places requires a negative COVID-19 test, not proof of vaccination. And the country’s “zero-COVID” approach means that only a small proportion of the population has been infected and built immunity that way, compared to other places. MDT/AP
