Covid-19: China confines buildings in Shanghai, as well as a city of 9 million people

Members of the medical staff carry out massive tests in a building in Shanghai, March 20, 2022. © Xihao Jiang / Reuters

Text by: RFI Follow

3 mins

China is currently facing its first major wave of the Omicron variant.

Still applying a “dynamic zero Covid-19” strategy, the entire province of Jilin is in quarantine, and in the south, the metropolis of Shenzhen too, while Shanghai, the most populous city in China, lives in slow motion.

Officially, the city is not confined, but buildings and streets are, in front of the appearance of hundreds of positive cases.

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With our correspondent in Shanghai,

Léo Cirah

“ 

Dear residents, this morning the PCR tests start at 11 a.m.

Please put on a mask and bring your ID card, your smartphone

 ”: it is 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning when the inhabitants of a building in Shanghai learn that they are confined for two days and that tests are announced .

The number of cases has been increasing in the Chinese metropolis for two weeks.

In

an attempt to stop the outbreaks

, the most affected districts have undertaken to test the entire population.

At 11 a.m., dozens of residents go to a small square transformed into a mobile test center: you have to register online, you receive a QR code that an employee scans, then a nurse gives them a cotton swab at the back of the throat.

That day and the next day, no going out.

But on the third day, around 8 p.m., the gate of the residence is still closed and no one has the slightest information: " 

I don't know anything at all

 ," says a guard, who is trying to calm the crowd.

According to a neighbor, a group has just pushed a guard, with others having received a few punches.

A little later, an agreement is reached: the inhabitants then have the right to go out, but only to shop nearby.

The next day, bad news, cases were discovered in neighboring streets: everyone must carry out two additional tests.

But five days later, the doors of the residence are still well guarded.

 To read also: 

In China, shorter confinements, but without notice in an attempt to stop Omicron

New city of 9 million confined

Chinese authorities on Tuesday decreed the confinement of a city of 9 million people in the northeast, as

China faces its worst epidemic outbreak since 2020

.

The industrial city of Shenyang (north-east), where many factories are located, including that of the German car manufacturer BMW, now confines its inhabitants to their residences.

The city is the capital of Liaoning province, bordering that of Jilin, which is by far the epicenter of this current epidemic wave, due to the Omicron variant.

China's Health Ministry announced 4,770 new positive cases nationwide on Tuesday.

Very low figures in comparison with other countries in the world, but high for

China and its “

zero Covid-19

strategy .

Thanks to confinements, quarantines on arrival in the territory or even tracing of movements, the country has stemmed the epidemic for two years, allowing the Chinese to live an almost normal life.

But this strategy, which has saved human lives (officially 4,638 dead since the start of the pandemic), weighs on the economy of the Asian giant.

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  • China

  • Coronavirus

  • Confinement

  • Health and medicine