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26 million people in Shanghai locked down due to high number of COVID cases: NPR

Residents wearing masks walk past a security guard wearing masks through a barricadeed Galaxy Soho commercial office building for health monitoring after a case of COVID-19 was detected in the area. area on Tuesday in Beijing. China has sent more than 10,000 medical personnel from across the country to Shanghai, including 2,000 military medical personnel.

Andy Wong / AP


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Andy Wong / AP

BEIJING – The COVID-19 outbreak in China’s largest city Shanghai remains “extremely bad” amid an ongoing crackdown that has detained some 26 million people at their homes, an official city ​​said Tuesday.

Shanghai’s disease control working group director, Gu Honghui, was quoted by state media as saying the outbreak in the city “remains at a high level.”

“The situation is extremely dire,” Gu said.

China has sent more than 10,000 medical personnel from around the world to support the city, including 2,000 military personnel, and is testing scores of people, some of whom have been locked up for weeks.

Much of eastern Shanghai, which was supposed to reopen last Friday, remains locked down along with the western half of the city.

Officials will reassess the precautions once the results of the tests on all city residents are analyzed, Gu said.

“Previously, citizens were asked to continue to follow the current lockdown measures and stay in their homes except for medical and other emergency situations,” Gu said.

Shanghai has reported more than 73,000 positive COVID-19 cases since the highly contagious Omicron variant in March.

Shanghai recorded another 13,354 cases on Monday – the majority of which were asymptomatic – bringing the city’s total to more than 73,000 since the latest wave of infections began last month. No deaths have been attributed to the outbreak due to the omicron variant BA.2, which is more infectious but also less lethal than the previous delta strain.

Another outbreak continued to rage in Jilin province, northeast of Beijing, and the capital Beijing also recorded nine more cases, only one of which was asymptomatic. The workers closed down the entire shopping mall in the city where one case was discovered.

While China’s vaccination rate hovers around 90%, domestically produced inactivated virus vaccines are considered weaker than mRNA vaccines such as those made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna used used abroad, as well as in Chinese territories such as Hong Kong and Macao. . Immunization rates among the elderly are also much lower than in the general population, with only about half of those over 80 years of age fully immunized.

Meanwhile, complaints have surfaced in Shanghai about the difficulty of getting food and daily necessities, and the shortage of medical staff, volunteers and hospital beds in isolation wards, where tens of thousands of people are being watched.

Shanghai has converted an exhibition hall and other facilities into large isolation centers, where people with mild or no symptoms are housed in a sea of ​​beds separated by makeshift partitions.

Gu said there are currently about 47,700 beds for COVID-19 patients, another 30,000 beds will be ready soon. It is not clear how many hospital beds are available for the patients being monitored, who according to the city health authority are more than 100,000 people.

Public outrage has been fueled by reports and video clips posted on the internet documenting the death of a nurse who was denied admission to her private hospital under COVID-19 restrictions. and infants separated from their parents.

The circulation of video footage showing infants being kept in cribs prompted the city’s Clinical Center for Public Health to issue a notice saying the babies were in good care and were in the process of moving in. a new facility when the footage is made.

At a virtual town hall on Monday, the US Consulate in Shanghai warned of the possibility of family separation amid the lockdown, but said it had “extremely limited capacity” to intervene. in such cases.

Concern is growing about the potential economic impact on China’s financial capital, which is also a major manufacturing and shipping hub. Most public transport has been suspended and non-essential businesses closed, although airports and train stations remain open and the city’s ports and some key industries such as automobile factories remain open. still continue to operate.

International events in the city have been canceled and three out of five foreign companies with operations in Shanghai said they have cut their revenue forecasts for this year, according to a survey conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce. done last week. One-third of 120 companies that responded to the survey said they had delayed investments.

Despite those concerns and growing public frustration, China says it is sticking to a tough “zero tolerance” approach requiring lockdowns, mass checks and mandatory quarantines. all suspected cases and close contacts.

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