View of Shenzhen Bay taken from Hong Kong on February 6, 2020 (AFP/Anthony WALLACE)
The 17 million residents of Shenzhen, a tech hub in southern China, spent their first day in lockdown on Monday due to a record spike in Covid-19 cases that forced an iPhone manufacturing plant to suspend operations. activities while restrictions have been imposed in other major cities across the country, including Shanghai.
The Shenzhen authorities imposed a new containment on Sunday after the appearance of epidemic foci linked to the neighboring territory of Hong Kong, where the virus causes many deaths.
Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, Apple’s main supplier, announced on Monday the suspension of its activities in Shenzhen, its largest factory, as the confinement hampered local manufacturing activity.
A health worker helps people in Shanghai get a QR code to get tested for Covid-19 on March 14, 2022 (AFP/Hector RETAMAL)
Foxconn, which employs tens of thousands of workers in the city, said it had transferred its production to other sites.
Shenzhen is one of ten cities in China to be under lockdown, which also affects major centers, such as Dalian, Nanjing and Tianjin near Beijing.
Authorities on Monday identified 2,300 new cases across the country. Nearly 3,400 had been counted the day before, the highest figure since the start of the pandemic.
If the number of cases remains low compared to other countries, it remains remarkable in the context of China where the authorities have continued, since 2020, to apply a “zero Covid” policy in the face of the epidemic.
In recent days, at least 26 officials from three provinces have been sacked over their mishandling of the outbreak, state media reported.
A health official, Lei Zhenglong, indicated on the state channel CCTV that more than 10,000 contaminations had been identified in March in ten provinces and warned of a situation “still evolving” in many places.
Mass screening operation for Covid-19 in Shenzhen, southern China, on March 13, 2022 (AFP/STR)
In Shenzhen, “there have been many small outbreaks in neighborhoods and factories,” Huang Qiang, a local government official, said at a press briefing on Monday, suggesting he said the continued need for “more precautions”.
– “Hold on” –
Photos shared with AFP by a Shenzhen resident showed the entrances to a closed residential compound as people joked on social media about how everyone rushed to the office to collect their laptops before the entrance in force of the confinement.
On the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday, technology stocks tumbled, Shenzhen hosting, in addition to Foxconn, the headquarters of technological flagships like Huawei and Tencent.
Testing for Covid-19 in Shenzhen, southern China, March 13, 2022 (AFP/STR)
In Shanghai, China’s most populous metropolis, residential neighborhoods have been cordoned off even as authorities try to avoid a general lockdown.
The city reported 170 new cases on Monday, a sign of concern according to economic circles.
A restaurateur with four establishments in different neighborhoods shared his struggles with the restrictions. “The policies are different depending on the neighborhood,” he told AFP, on condition of anonymity. “I want to close one and keep the others open, and see how it goes later. What can I do but hold on?”
– “Pursuing the zero-Covid strategy” –
The situation is more complicated elsewhere. In the province of Jilin, in the North-East, at least five cities of this province have been cordoned off since the beginning of March, including the large industrial center of Changchun where the nine million inhabitants have been confined to their homes since Friday.
On Monday, the German Volkswagen group announced that it had suspended until Wednesday, due to an outbreak of Covid-19 cases, production at three sites in Changchun including two factories of the VW and Audi brands as well as a production site. of spare parts, all three operated jointly with the Chinese group FAW.
So far, China has managed to control sporadic outbreaks through local lockdowns, mass screenings, population control through tracing apps as the country’s borders remain virtually closed.
But the appearance of the Omicron variant shows the limits of this approach at a time when most other countries have chosen to live with the virus, and faced with the weariness of the population and the contagiousness of omicron.
The prestigious virologist Zhang Wenhong estimated on Monday that the time to relax the “zero-Covid” policy had not yet come, despite the low mortality rate linked to Omicron.
“It is very important for China to continue to adopt the Covid-zero strategy in the near future,” Zhang wrote on social media.
“But that does not mean that we are going to permanently adopt the strategy of containment and mass screening,” he added.
© 2022 AFP
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