Shanghai, one of the world’s financial hubs, continues to reel from Covid-19 surge as the city recorded more than 25,000 new Covid-19 cases on Monday. People familiar with developments told news agency ChannelNewsAsia that authorities are shaping an exit plan as reports of Shanghai residents growing increasingly tired of stringent lockdowns surface.
Reports of the human cost of China’s harsh lockdowns have also forced authorities to bring dynamic changes to its zero-Covid policy which it continues to implement despite the world moving towards living with Covid.
Residential areas in Shanghai continue to report food and medicine shortages – due to the three week-long lockdown caused by the biggest outbreak of Covid since it was first discovered in Wuhan in 2019.
The dynamic adjustments according to the report by ChannelNewsAsia is that Shanghai will be divided into three categories. More than 7,600 areas will remain sealed due to Covid-19 cases. More than 2,600 areas will be subject to controls following a week of no new cases and more than 7,500 other new areas were opened up after two weeks of no positive cases.
People living in more than 7,500 prevention areas can now move around their neighbourhoods. These areas will be sealed off in case there are new outbreaks.
Chinese state-run daily Global Times said that western nations have spread a false narrative that Omicron is mild and comparing it to a ‘mild flu’ is erroneous. Quoting Chinese epidemiologists, a report claimed that assumptions of such kind are false and said that Omicron poses threats akin or even higher than the Delta variant of Covid-19.
Global Times cited Wu Fan, an expert with Shanghai’s Covid medical team and said that Omicron’s nature has ‘qualities that have upended normal perceptions virologists have about viruses, such as rapid mutations and ability to evade immune systems’. Fan said that given its ever-changing nature China should not steer away from its zero-Covid policy or else it may face more Covid-19 cases which could further impact the healthcare infrastructure of China.
Wu highlighted however that most elderly people in western nations are vaccinated due to which despite high death rate there is less severe infection among the elderly population when they were infected with the Omicron variant.
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