Shanghai’s Covid lockdown gets tougher…

By Our Special Correspondent

Authorities in Shanghai have again tightened anti-virus restrictions, just as the city was emerging from a month of strict lockdown due to a COVID-19 outbreak.

Notices issued in several districts said residents were ordered to stay home and are barred from receiving nonessential deliveries as part of a “quiet period” lasting at least until May 11. The tightened measures could be extended depending on the results of mass testing, the notices said.

“Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. Together we can lift the lockdown at an early date,” said one notice issued in the city’s Huangpu district and posted online. It wasn’t clear what prompted the renewed tightening with numbers of new Covid-19 cases in the city continuing to fall.

Shanghai on May 9 reported 3,947 cases over the previous 24 hours, almost all of them without symptoms, along with 11 deaths. Authorities have been gradually lifting isolation rules on the city’s 25 million residents but the new orders appear to be returning to conditions at the early stage of the outbreak.

Shanghai originally ordered mass testing along with a limited lockdown, but extended that as COVID-19 cases rose. Thousands of residents have been forced into centralized quarantine centers for showing a positive test result or merely having been in contact with an infected person.

Despite the steady decline in infections, Shanghai authorities’ tighter measures appear to be a response to a renewed push by senior Communist Party officials in Beijing to smother any traces of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the corona virus. Following a meeting Thursday, the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top decision-making body, compared the pandemic measures in Shanghai with a war that must be won.

“Every time, they say lockdown will be eased after a few days, but there seems to be no end," said the woman, who asked that she be identified only by her surname, Lu, to avoid repercussions from authorities who have cracked down heavily on dissent.

Employing military metaphors, the officials, led by Shanghai’s Communist Party chief Li Qiang, pledged to “set down military orders and overcome 10,000 difficulties to charge forward in attack!”Shanghai has been trying to contain all infections to isolation facilities, with the aim of eliminating every Covid-19 case in the wider community before reopening. But it has been struggling to do so.

Exports rose 3.7% over a year earlier to $273.6 billion, down sharply from March’s 15.7% growth, customs data showed on May 9. Reflecting weak Chinese demand, imports crept up 0.7% to $222.5 billion, in line with the previous month’s growth below 1%.