New Cases Of COVID-19 Infection In Shanghai Reach 4,400: Residents Are Prohibited From Leaving Home

Illustration of a mass COVID-19 test site in China. (Wikimedia Commons/David290)

JAKARTA - China's most populous city, Shanghai, tightened the first of a two-stage COVID-19 lockdown on Tuesday, asking some residents to stay indoors unless they have been tested for COVID-19 as the daily case count exceeds 4,400.

The lockdown imposed by authorities roughly divides the city along the Huangpu River, separating the historic center from the eastern financial and industrial district of Pudong to allow testing.

While Shanghai's caseload remains low by global standards, with a record 4,381 asymptomatic cases and 96 symptomatic cases as of Monday, Shanghai is becoming a testing ground for China's 'zero-COVID' strategy, as it tries to control the highly contagious variant of Omicron.

Residents east of Huangpu were locked in their housing complex on Monday, but most were allowed to roam inside. However, on Tuesday, three residents told Reuters the neighborhood committee had told them they were no longer allowed to leave their homes.

"The kids were still having a picnic yesterday and having fun", said one of them, who declined to be named, citing privacy concerns.

Drone footage published by state media shows empty streets beneath the skyscrapers of Lujiazui city's financial district. Public transport in the east has been shut down and all non-approved vehicles ordered to get off the road.

Meanwhile, Wu Qianyu, an official at the city's health commission told a briefing, "clear requests" have been made to residents not to leave their apartments, not even to take pets for walks or take out the trash, during the COVID-19 test-related lockdown phase.

She said 8.26 million tests were carried out by as many as 17,000 testing personnel in the city's locked-down districts on Monday.

"Volunteers share the hard work on the front lines of epidemic prevention and control, we should be grateful", Wu said.

There are signs of growing frustration on Chinese social media and dozens of residents flocked to the Weibo platform to seek help from relatives, with some struggling to access medical services.

Residents in the west of the city have been stockpiling shops and markets in anticipation of their lockdown starting April 1. However, US hypermarket chain Costco Wholesale Corp, whose stores in Shanghai have been packed with shoppers in recent days, said it would close from Tuesday, along with several gyms and shopping centers also in the western district.

Even though China is sticking to its plans to crush the outbreak, experts abroad remain skeptical about the efficacy of the lockdown in the face of the new, highly contagious variant.

"Obviously from Australia and elsewhere in the world, lockdowns have been completely ineffective against Omicron, so expect a big wave to come", explains Adrian Esterman, a biostatistics expert at the University of South Australia.