Nina Droff, edited by Juline Garnier 10:10 a.m., May 01, 2022

After Shanghai, will the Chinese capital soon also be reconfigured?

With the resurgence of Covid-19 cases, the city decided to toughen the rules.

Since Saturday, negative tests are again necessary to go to most public places and the hypothesis of a drastic reconfinement worries French nationals on the spot.

A “zero Covid” strategy difficult to maintain.

China is currently experiencing its worst outbreak since early 2020 due to the Omicron variant, so Beijing has toughened up.

As of May 5, a negative Covid test will be required to access public places.

Shops and neighborhoods have already begun to be cordoned off and the strategy of drastic confinement in Beijing is increasingly mentioned.

The fate of Shanghai, which has been living in strict confinement for several weeks, is on everyone's mind.

"The evolution will be done day by day"

"In people's minds, that's it, because the images of Shanghai obviously shocked the inhabitants of Beijing enormously. For them, it's absolutely incredible that a city like Shanghai should come to such extremes", worries Jean -Philippe Suchet, French expatriate in Beijing.

The situation really changed about a week ago, when there was a significant increase in the number of cases.

That's enough to ultimately trigger government actions in a zero-Covid type strategy.

With massive testing, places that are already confined, areas or stores are closed,” he says.

>> Find all the editorial newspapers of Europe 1 in replay and podcast here

This French national, like the Chinese population, hopes that these measures will be enough to quickly contain this epidemic wave linked to Omicron.

"So we're waiting. We're holding our breath about what's going to happen. The evolution is going to happen day by day."