Volunteers carry out checks on the streets of Shanghai. /
Outrage among its 25 million inhabitants for the extension of the closure and the “inhumane measures” to stop the worst outbreak of the coronavirus since Wuhan
Discomfort is growing in Shanghai due to its confinement due to coronavirus, which began last week and, in theory, should end during the early hours of this Tuesday. But the closure of this megalopolis will continue because infections continue to rise and the authorities are going to carry out PCR tests on its 25 million inhabitants for the next three days. While the world “flu” the pandemic, China continues to be trapped by its “Covid 0” policy, which has managed to keep the coronavirus at bay since the outbreak was controlled in Wuhan two years ago but is now threatened by the super-contagious Omicron variant.
For the second day, China reported more than 13,000 coronavirus cases on Sunday, the highest number since February 2020, when the disease ravaged the city of Wuhan. Of those, some 9,000 cases were in Shanghai. Although, according to the authorities, there have been no new deaths and the vast majority of those infected throughout the country are asymptomatic (11,711), the “Covid 0” strategy ordered by President Xi Jinping forces them to eradicate both the outbreak of Shanghai like that of the northeastern province of Jilin, where its 24 million inhabitants are also locked up at home.
To cut the chain of transmission, they not only confine the population, but also isolate the positives and their contacts, which is causing numerous complaints and protests in Shanghai, the most developed and open city in China. To the population’s weariness due to the restrictions and confinements of neighborhoods and districts, which began in early March after the outbreak of the outbreak, are added the drastic measures to stop it, sometimes “totally inhumane”. This is how netizens are defining in Chinese social networks the separation of young children infected by the coronavirus from their parents.
Despite their young age, minors are transferred to isolation centers, without their families if the parents are not infected. Videos of babies and young children in hospital wards and cared for only by a few nurses in special protective suits are circulating on social media, sparking public outrage. “Do parents have to meet the conditions to accompany their children? It’s stupid! It should be your most basic right,” complains a netizen on Weibo.
Despite these protests, the local government has defended these separations on Monday to cut off contagion. “If the child is less than seven years old, he will receive treatment in a public health center. For older children or adolescents, we are isolating them in centralized quarantine centers, “said the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, according to the AFP agency. If the parents are also infected, they can live with the minors in the same place, but it seems that there are quite a few families separated according to the images that circulate on the internet.
Added to these complaints is the discomfort due to the long confinement, which is taking its toll on the mood of the Shanghainese because the shortage of certain products, especially fresh food, is already beginning. As the transport of goods and home deliveries have been reduced, many inmates have a hard time making their daily purchases. In addition to having to get up early to place their orders before six in the morning, the residents of the urbanizations are forming groups through WeChat, similar to the censored WhatsApp, to order their purchases in large quantities and thus have less risk of them being cancelled. .
To alleviate these shortcomings, the Government is sending boxes with vegetables and eggs to the inmates, which are distributed by volunteers from the neighborhood committees controlled by the Communist Party. But, in a city with a majority middle class like Shanghai, many complain about its quality and miss the food they are used to. As they watch the rest of the world turn the page on the pandemic, their frustration grows with each passing day without seeing an end to their confinement on their floors of large housing beehives. While before they could go down to the gardens of their urbanizations to walk without going out into the street, now they can no longer even take their dogs out to relieve themselves. Unfortunately for the resigned Chinese, it is not the first time this has happened because there have already been complaints of lack of supplies and separation of children in previous quarantines, such as the one in Xi’an in January.
There is so much unrest that, last Thursday, the secretary general of the Shanghai municipal government, Ma Chunlei, was forced to apologize publicly for “the inadequate guarantees for people’s lives in closed areas.” In addition, many chronic patients cannot receive their medicines or go to hospitals, whose emergencies have been closed to focus on the coronavirus or for disinfections. The death of two asthma patients for not being able to be treated, including a nurse, has sparked so much criticism that the authorities have been forced to order the reopening of the emergency services.
Two years after Wuhan, the Chinese authorities remain committed to confinement and mass testing despite their strong social and economic impact. For the first quarter, a drop in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is expected due to the closure of Shanghai, China’s economic capital and headquarters of important companies and the largest freight port on the planet. If the paralysis continues, its effects will be felt not only in the “world’s factory”, but in the rest of its countries due to the disruption of the already stressed global supply chain. But the authoritarian regime in Beijing is not willing to change its “Covid 0” policy because it has flagged its control of the coronavirus in the face of bloodletting in Western democracies. In addition, the catastrophe that other overpopulated developing countries have suffered, such as India, Indonesia or Vietnam, prevents it from letting the Omicron variant circulate, whose BA.2 subtype has recently triggered infections and mortality in Hong Kong.
For resigned Shanghainese, the only option is to wait patiently. Confined even before the total lockdown, a Spanish resident in Shanghai complains bitterly that “they are not going to let us go. This is going to be a second Wuhan.”