TestimonialsChina’s largest city has been enforcing drastic anti-Covid-19 restriction measures for more than 40 days. Story of a suspended life that undermines morale.
After six weeks of strict confinement for the 25 million inhabitants of Shanghai, the municipality is gradually regaining control of the situation. On Thursday May 5, the city declared 4,466 daily cases, compared to more than 27,000 in mid-April. Officially, only 2.54 million people are subject to the most drastic restrictions. But, in reality, many inhabitants of theoretically liberated areas still do not have the right to leave their homes. Activity is gradually picking up, starting with strategic industrial companies.
March 10: Mass PCR testing
I noticed the first worrying signs about ten days after the appearance of a new epidemic focus in Shanghai. On my way to the office, Xiangyang Park is taped off and large white tents have been erected, hinting that mass PCR testing is about to start. With 75 cases that day, the situation is not alarming. But, in accordance with the zero Covid strategy applied in China, Shanghai is tackling the problem head-on: the city is quarantining thousands of people, those positive for Covid-19, contact cases, and even contact cases of contact cases. On March 12, as a precaution, Shanghai announced the closure of schools and imposed a test on anyone wishing to leave the city.
March 16: the first confinement
While other cities confined earlier, Shanghai, 25 million inhabitants, the world’s largest container port and Chinese financial capital, wants to believe in its targeted approach. But the Omicron variant is progressing: from 200 cases on March 15, we go to a thousand on March 22. In mid-March, Shanghai decided to confine the most affected districts for forty-eight hours, the time to test the population twice. In my residence in the old center, the news is announced by loudspeakers brandished at 7 a.m. by volunteers from the residents’ committees, a local Communist Party organization. Through the alleys of red brick houses, the inhabitants, young well-to-do Chinese, expatriates and old Shanghainese, march towards the adjacent square where tents have been set up.
The forty-eight hours elapsed, the two exits of the residence are still closed: one by an anti-theft device, and the other monitored by several bao’an (“peacekeepers”), generally employed on a precarious contract. Shanghai has recruited thousands to control the city. On the third day of our confinement, which was only supposed to last two, tempers flared, for lack of information: a few punches were exchanged with guards, I am told when I arrive on site. The police are already there. Finally, the residents’ committee lets us go out shopping nearby.
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