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Shanghai, China’s largest city, will order mass testing of all 1.3 million residents in its central Yangpu district on Friday and confine them to their homes at least until the results are released.
The demand echoes measures ordered over the summer that have resulted in a two-month lockdown of the entire city of 25 million people, which has devastated the local economy and sparked food shortages and a rare confrontation between residents and authorities.
At the start of the lockdown, authorities said they would only last a few days, but have since continued to extend the deadline.
Since a major congress for the ruling Communist Party ended this week, authoritarian leader Xi Jinping was granted a third five-year term and brought his top institutions to life with his loyalists.
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Strict measures have been introduced across the country, from Shanghai in the east to Tibet in the west, where anti-lockdown protests have also been reported.
Mobile phone footage smuggled out of the area showed groups of Tibetan and Han migrants marching through the streets of Lhasa to protest the 74-day blockade. The video, which was reportedly filmed on Wednesday night, showed no signs of violence.
Lhasa has been under heavy surveillance since bloody anti-government protests broke out in the city in 2008 and spread to Tibetan areas.
Despite public outrage, the former chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, the city’s top official, who was ultimately responsible for the lockdown, won second place on the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee — a sign of Mr. Xi’s elevated political stature. Loyalty is higher than those who can gain public support through competent administration.
Li Qiang, who was Xi Jinping’s virtual chief of staff when he led the eastern province of Zhejiang, has been replaced by Chen Jining, a former president of Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University and minister of environmental protection.
Chen, 58, was educated at Brunel University in London and worked at Imperial College London, where he obtained his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1993.
Many Chinese had hoped to loosen strict anti-COVID-19 protocols that remain in place even as the rest of the world opens up. China’s borders remain largely closed, and entrants must undergo a 10-day quarantine at designated locations.
Despite the cost, and what the World Health Organization says is unsustainable, China argues that the strategy has kept the number of cases and deaths at a fraction of those of other countries, even though Beijing’s figures are often questioned.
China reported 1,337 new cases on Friday — most of them asymptomatic — and no new deaths. Shanghai reported 11 asymptomatic cases, 1 symptomatic confirmed case in Tibet, and 5 asymptomatic cases. China said it had recorded 258,660 cases and 5,226 deaths since the pandemic was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
Shanghai plans to build a permanent quarantine center on an island on the Huangpu River that divides the financial center, according to business magazine Caixin, a sign that China will maintain draconian measures for a long time.
The 1.6 billion yuan ($221 million) project on Fuxing Island, which will expand existing facilities to create 3,009 isolation rooms and 3,250 hospital beds, is expected to complete construction within six months, Caixin said.
China’s domestically developed vaccines are considered relatively ineffective, and it has refused to approve foreign brands such as Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
Still, China wants more people to get booster shots before restrictions are eased. As of mid-October, 90 percent of the Chinese were fully vaccinated, and 57 percent received booster shots.
China relies on domestically developed vaccines, mainly two inactivated vaccines, which have been shown to be effective at preventing deaths and serious illness but not as effective as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines at stopping the spread of disease.
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Chinese authorities also do not mandate vaccinations—a negative COVID-19 test is required to enter an office building or other public place, not a proof of vaccination. The country’s strict “coronavirus zero” approach means that compared to elsewhere, only a small percentage of people are infected and have built immunity this way.
Therefore, it is unclear how widespread COVID-19 will be if travel warnings and quarantine rules are lifted. Until then, the hodgepodge of the nation’s 1.4 billion people will remain.
In Shigatse, Tibet’s second-largest city, authorities announced that “normal life and production order” will resume from Friday.
Meanwhile, authorities on Wednesday ordered a lockdown of 900,000 people in Wuhan for at least five days. In the remote Qinghai province, the urban area of ​​Xining has been locked down since Friday.
In Beijing, Universal Studios has closed its hotels and attractions “to cooperate with epidemic prevention and control.”
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