Covid pushes China to danger zone

After Shanghai, another city in China Guangzhou on Monday tightened Covid restrictions, continuing the country’s struggles to contain a nationwide outbreak. While Shanghai remains in lockdown with most people forced to stay in their apartments and get food by delivery, Ghuanzhou closed in-person classes at elementary and middle schools, shifting courses online. Municipal authorities said locals should not leave the city unless necessary, and would need a negative virus test from within the last 48 hours to do so.

Frustrated with the harsh Covid lockdown restrictions, Shanghai residents were seen screaming from their apartments in new videos going viral on social media. Many such videos are now available in various platforms, which show people squabbling with local authorities and warning of repercussions. The locals have been voicing mainly against non-availability of food and basic supplies.

Shanghai, China’s largest city, has been under severe lockdown since April 5 as part of the Chinese government’s “zero Covid Policy’. All the 26 million people of the city have been ordered to stay at home.

The health expert said that China might be hitting a “breaking point” with Omicron’s BA.2 variant, which is leading the surge in cases in Shanghai. Shanghai reported a record high combined number of cases for Sunday, 914 with symptoms and 25,173 without. For Saturday, authorities reported 1,006 cases with symptoms and 23,937 asymptomatic ones.

Electric vehicle company Nio announced Saturday it was suspending production and delaying delivery of its cars since suppliers in the northern province of Jilin, Shanghai and the nearby Jiangsu province have had to halt production due to Covid. On the other hand, all 11 districts of Guangzhou city began another round of mass testing late last week. The city said Saturday it is in the process of turning an expo centre into a makeshift hospital. The latest wave of cases stems from the highly transmissible omicron variant and marks the worst Covid outbreak on the mainland since the initial phase of the pandemic in early 2020.