Shanghai locks down half of city to fight Covid-19 outbreak: Report

The outbreak is testing country's virus strategy, which is proving tougher to prosecute amid more contagious variants and is dragging on the world's 2nd-largest economy as rest of the globe normalises

Shanghai will lock down the city in two phases to conduct a mass testing blitz for Covid-19, as authorities scramble to staunch a spiralling outbreak that’s challenging China’s zero-tolerance approach to the virus like never before.  

At 5am on Monday, the city of 25 million people locked down areas east of the Huangpu River, which includes its financial district and industrial parks, for four days. The lockdown then shifts to the other half of the city, in the west, for another four days, according to a statement Sunday from the local government.

Residents will be barred from leaving their homes, while public transport and car-hailing services will be suspended. Private cars will not be allowed on the roads unless necessary. Tesla Inc. is extending the production pause at its Shanghai plant to Thursday, people familiar with the matter said. Some financial companies rushed to call staff into offices before the lockdown and told workers to prepare to sleep there.

The sweeping restrictions come as China experiences its worst Covid spread since the virus’s emergence in Wuhan, with more than 6,000 locally-acquired cases reported nationwide on Sunday. 

The outbreak is testing the country’s virus strategy, which is proving tougher to prosecute amid more contagious variants and is dragging on the world’s second-largest economy as the rest of the globe normalises. 

About 62 million people in the country are either in lockdown or facing one imminently, according to Bloomberg News calculations.

China had recently pivoted to a more targeted approach to dealing with flareups as part of President Xi Jinping’s dual goals of seeking to eliminate the virus while minimising the economic and social impacts of the Covid Zero strategy. 

But the rapid rise in cases in Shanghai underscores the limitations of such measures in the face of the highly transmissible omicron strain.