Shanghai, one of the most populated cities in the world, took on the air of a ghost town in the face of the threat of a lockdown for its 25 million inhabitants due to a covid-19 outbreak.
Although the number of cases of covid is low compared to other countries, China is currently facing its most serious outbreak since the beginning of 2020.
The country announced almost 5,300 new infections on Tuesday, marking the return of mass testing, lockdowns and restrictions on displacement.
A symbol of Shanghai, the Bund Pier on the banks of the Huangpu River, usually full of visitors, went silent this week with measures to eradicate local cases of covid.
Only a handful of pedestrians wearing masks took pictures of the landscape, while workers had to stay home, students received online classes, and restaurants were closed in some districts.
The restrictions in Shanghai were directed to areas where there were pockets of contagion, rather than the general confinements applied in other Chinese cities.
Even so, local people found it difficult to know what to do.
“We were informed last night to suspend (restaurant service) and we are going to abide by it, otherwise they shut us down completely,” the owner of a restaurant in downtown Shanghai told AFP.
In a neighbouring district, another restaurant owner claimed that the measures discouraged people from eating out.
“We don't have many customers these days,” he regretted, noting that there is a lot of anxiety.
On the social network Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, a woman complained that the ban was announced just when she rented a place for a restaurant.
“I'm literally going to cry,” he said.
- Safety suits -
In Shenzhen, a southern city of 17.5 million inhabitants, a more severe lockdown was imposed and videos on social networks showed people shopping hastily in supermarkets.
Many sites were blocked with red plastic barriers and long lines formed between the large towers where health workers in safety suits began to take samples for mass covid-19 tests.
Rigid Chinese controls have enjoyed popular support, while the death toll has been low and, after the chaotic first wave of infections in 2020, life has returned to normal.
“I am now used (to control measures), we have had them for a long time,” Yan Zhiping, a Beijing resident, told AFP. “As long as we protect ourselves well, there will be no problem.”
But the frequency of health restrictions began to exhaust the patience of many and intensified the debate over whether Beijing should adjust its rigid zero-covid strategy, especially in the face of the contagious omicron variant, whose cases have been less severe.
A resident in Shanghai complained online that the city did “a bad job”, and accused the government of preventing people from uploading negative comments.
“Proper prevention and control of the virus in Shanghai is a joke, an extremely irresponsible joke,” another posted.
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