The fear of the inhabitants of Beijing to a confinement increased this Thursday, after the detection of 50 new cases of covid-19 and the decision of the authorities to extend the perimeter closures, while Shanghai has begun a timid reopening after more than a month of fierce confinement.
The capital extended this Thursday to two other areas the partial closures that already affected three areas of the populated Chaoyang district and suspended classes in all schools in that area – with more than three million residents – when transmission chains were detected in centers educational.
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Some 20 million of the 23 million residents of the city must complete three rounds of PCR this week with which the authorities hope to detect and remove all positives and their close contacts from circulation in order to prevent community transmission of the virus. .
stable supply
Although the concern about a confinement as strict as the one that Shanghai has been going through for a month is evident in the inhabitants of the capital, The fear of shortages has calmed down compared to previous days, when Pekingese rushed to buy food and essential products in stores.
The supply of fresh products and food remains stable for the moment in the city, whose authorities have insisted that supplies are guaranteed and have asked the population to avoid massive purchases driven by panic.
Since last April 22, 142 cases have been registered in 10 districts of the capital, 80 of them in Chaoyang.
(Also: China records first human case of H3N8 bird flu)
It is there where the “temporary control” zones are concentrated, as the authorities call the perimeter closures, in which residents can leave their homes but not the quarantined area, where essential services and businesses operate but restaurants have closed. , cafeterias, cinemas, libraries and gyms, among other public spaces.
Meanwhile, in the eastern megalopolis of Shanghai, embarked on a strict lockdown since April 1 – in some areas, even since early or mid-March – the latest rounds of mass testing have generated some optimism, as the number of new infections fell for the fifth consecutive day and stood at its lowest level in the last 24 days.
Since March 1, the city, of some 25 million people, has accumulated some 544,000 infections, with some 10,600 detected this Wednesday.
Shanghai reopens, but little
According to the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post, the Shanghai authorities are preparing guidelines for the reopening of public transport or shops while they try to reactivate the vaccination campaign, suspended these weeks, for the older population.
Of the 5.8 million people over the age of 60 who live in the city, almost 38% have not yet been inoculated or, at least, not with the full schedule.
(You can read: Shanghai: has the ‘zero covid’ policy really worked in China?)
Given the apparent downward trend in infections, Shanghai is trying to regain some normalcy from an economic point of view, with the local government preparing a second list of companies that are allowed to resume at least part of their production, he explained. This Thursday at a press conference the spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, Gao Feng.
The initial list, published on the 15th, contained 666 companies from sectors such as semiconductors, automotive, equipment manufacturing or pharmaceuticals.
Shanghai tries to regain some normality from an economic point of view
According to Gao, 247 of them -that is, 37% of the total- are foreign, and among them he highlighted some “key” such as Volkswagen or Tesla; in the latter, some 8,000 of its 15,000 workers have already returned to their jobs.
The spokesman assured that more foreign companies are “actively requesting” to be included in the next batch of authorizations, although he acknowledged that there are still “specific operational problems” when it comes to resuming operations in the factories.
The official Global Times newspaper recently explained that, in many of the authorized companies, the rate of resumption of work is still below 50% due to factors such as the lack of basic resources, logistical blockages and the inability of many workers to leave of the residential complexes in which they are confined.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING*
*With information from EFE
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