In the city that is the economic heart of the country today 24,952 infections have been identified, low numbers that have however triggered a hard lockdown
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BEIJING – How serious is the situation in Shanghai? Coronavirus cases due to the Omicron variant continue to rise and risk overwhelming the Zero Tolerance policy for Covid-19 to which China is anchored. The Shanghai health crisis may open a hole in the dam of political stability: this is the dilemma for the authorities of the megalopolis and the central government.
The climate of uncertainty was heightened by the American decision to allow voluntary repatriation of non-essential personnel from the United States Consulate in Shanghaithe State Department advised American citizens to reconsider any trip to China due to arbitrary restrictions due to Covid-19. The Beijing Foreign Ministry protested Washington’s smear attitude towards our pandemic prevention policy.
Today in Shanghai they have been identified 24,952 infections, of which 1,006 symptomatic (detected by the swabs of Saturday 9 April). The cases ascertained in this wave that started in slow motion at the end of February in the megalopolis are about 120 thousand, out of a population of about 26 million inhabitants: numbers still relatively low therefore and about 95% of positives are classified as asymptomatic (although apparently moderate symptoms are included in the category). In any other country it would be a situation to be kept under observation, without drastic decisions.
In Shanghai, however, the reaction was contradictory. Now managed with a lockdown that takes us back to the darkest days of Wuhanbetween January and April of 2020. But still a few days before closing everything, the authorities assured that Shanghai would not be stopped, so as not to strike the heart of the financial and commercial activities of the national economy (its GDP is worth about 4.8% of the Chinese total). Even Xi Jinping in mid-March had asked to take into account the suffering economy and the leaders of the Shanghai Party had felt encouraged to resist, trying to limit the damage. Only the residential blocks where cases of positivity had emerged and the rest of the city continued its normal life. Then, faced with the evidence that the Omicron variant spreads very rapidly, as we have dramatically learned in the West, there was the counterorder. The Zero Tolerance line was also imposed in Shanghai, which aims to cancel the contagions from the territory.
On March 28th a lockdown was triggered which should have been limited to two short phases: four days in Pudong (the area east of the Huangpu River that runs through the city); and four others in Puxi (West). But the swab campaigns on the whole population revealed that Omicron was running in silence: Shanghai found itself closed to the bitter end and incredibly unprepared for the emergency. The entire population has been subjected to repeated rounds of swabs and the numbers continue to rise.
As there is no trust quarantine at home for the positives, tens of thousands of people were concentrated in temporary structures, such as those for the Expo, totally inadequate from a logistical and hygienic point of view: middle-class citizens found themselves in huge unadorned rooms, with little assistance; parents were separated from young children. The people locked in the house have run out of food supplies and the centralized supply system has not been able to solve the problem: We cannot make the last hundred meters for deliveries, admitted the deputy mayor, asking for people’s understanding for the delays. But the Chinese have an atavistic fear of food shortages, due to the famines that have afflicted the country for centuries; Besides, the Chinese are used to fresh vegetables, not canned food and in a dynamic city like Shanghai many are not even used to cooking at home. With the cordon sanitation tightened around the city, the daily supply for 26 million people slowed. No one dies or starves at home in Shanghai, but the psychological factor has created great tension.
On the social networks there have been testimonies and videos of protests, attempts to break the sanitary cords to go out and go shopping, furious and exasperated choirs started from the windows in the night: We want to work, we want to be freed, drones with loudspeakers fly over the neighborhoods and invite calm, intimidate to close the windows and wait . To ease the pressure, quarantine centers have been opened in other cities, even hundreds of kilometers away from Shanghai. At least two large Shanghai hospitals dedicated to the care of the elderly have filtered out reports of hidden deaths, doctors and staff overwhelmed by the emergency. The government responded by sending an army of medical workers gathered in other provinces to the metropolis: at least 38,000 doctors and nurses dedicated to reinforcing health facilities and carrying out tampons. When will the emergency end? The authorities have promised an easing of the conditions of the lockdown: a new round of tampons goes on for everyone and the residential communities that do not register infections for 14 days will be released. But 14 days in a metropolis like Shanghai is extremely long.
April 10, 2022 (change April 10, 2022 | 16:25)
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