SOURCE: AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

BEI­JING (AP) — Chi­na be­gan its most ex­ten­sive coro­n­avirus lock­down in two years Mon­day to con­duct mass test­ing and con­trol a grow­ing out­break in Shang­hai as ques­tions are raised about the eco­nom­ic toll of the na­tion’s “ze­ro-COVID” strat­e­gy.

Shang­hai, Chi­na’s fi­nan­cial cap­i­tal and largest city with 26 mil­lion peo­ple, had man­aged its small­er pre­vi­ous out­breaks with lim­it­ed lock­downs of hous­ing com­pounds and work­places where the virus was spread­ing.

But the city­wide lock­down that will be con­duct­ed in two phas­es will be Chi­na’s most ex­ten­sive since the cen­tral city of Wuhan, where the virus was first de­tect­ed in late 2019, con­fined its 11 mil­lion peo­ple to their homes for 76 days in ear­ly 2020. Mil­lions more have been kept in lock­down since then.

Shang­hai’s Pudong fi­nan­cial dis­trict and near­by ar­eas will be locked down from Mon­day to Fri­day as mass test­ing gets un­der­way, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment said. In the sec­ond phase of the lock­down, the vast down­town area west of the Huang­pu Riv­er that di­vides the city will start its own five-day lock­down Fri­day.

Res­i­dents will be re­quired to stay home, and de­liv­er­ies will be left at check­points to en­sure there is no con­tact with the out­side world. Of­fices and all busi­ness­es not con­sid­ered es­sen­tial will be closed and pub­lic trans­port sus­pend­ed.

Al­ready, many com­mu­ni­ties with­in Shang­hai have been locked down for the past week, with their hous­ing com­pounds blocked off with blue and yel­low plas­tic bar­ri­ers and res­i­dents re­quired to sub­mit to mul­ti­ple tests for COVID-19. Shang­hai’s Dis­ney­land theme park is among the busi­ness­es that closed ear­li­er. Au­tomak­er Tes­la is al­so sus­pend­ing pro­duc­tion at its Shang­hai plant, ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports.

Pan­ic-buy­ing was re­port­ed on Sun­day, with su­per­mar­ket shelves cleared of food, bev­er­ages and house­hold items. Ad­di­tion­al bar­ri­ers were be­ing erect­ed in neigh­bour­hoods Mon­day, with work­ers in haz­mat suits staffing check­points.

In-per­son ob­ser­va­tions of the April 5 Tomb Sweep­ing Fes­ti­val have been can­celed and memo­ri­als will in­stead be held on­line.

Some work­ers, in­clud­ing traders at the city’s stock mar­ket, were prepar­ing to stay with­in a COVID-19 “bub­ble” for the du­ra­tion of the lock­down.

Li Ji­amin, 31, who works in the fi­nance in­dus­try, said she had packed sev­er­al days of cloth­ing and sup­plies, and her com­pa­ny was sort­ing out sleep­ing and eat­ing arrange­ments.

“The over­all im­pact is still great,” Li told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, point­ing es­pe­cial­ly to loss­es suf­fered by work­ers in the in­for­mal sec­tor who have no such sup­port.

Huang Qi, 35, who works at a lo­cal uni­ver­si­ty, said he had un­der­gone a lock­down at home be­fore and pre­pared for the new round by stock­ing up.

“I think if the clo­sure con­tin­ues like this, our school work­ers will not be af­fect­ed much, but what about those who work in the re­al econ­o­my? How can their busi­ness be main­tained?” Huang said.

“I still hope that our so­ci­ety can find a bet­ter bal­ance be­tween en­sur­ing nor­mal life and epi­dem­ic pre­ven­tion and con­trol,” Huang added.

Shang­hai de­tect­ed an­oth­er 3,500 cas­es of in­fec­tion on Sun­day, though all but 50 were peo­ple who test­ed pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus but were not show­ing symp­toms of COVID-19. While peo­ple who are asymp­to­matic can still in­fect oth­ers, Chi­na cat­e­go­rizes such cas­es sep­a­rate­ly from “con­firmed cas­es” — those in peo­ple who are sick — lead­ing to much low­er to­tals in dai­ly re­ports.

Na­tion­wide, 1,219 new con­firmed cas­es of do­mes­tic in­fec­tion were de­tect­ed on Sun­day, more than 1,000 of them in the north-east­ern province of Jilin, along with 4,996 asymp­to­matic cas­es, the Na­tion­al Health Com­mis­sion re­port­ed on Mon­day.

Two deaths were re­port­ed March 20 in Jilin. Be­fore that, main­land Chi­na’s of­fi­cial death toll had stood at 4,636 for a year.

Chi­na has re­port­ed more than 56,000 con­firmed cas­es na­tion­wide this month, with the surge in Jilin ac­count­ing for most of them.

Jilin province is en­forc­ing trav­el bans and par­tial lock­downs in sev­er­al cities, in­clud­ing Changchun, one of the cen­tres of the Chi­nese au­to in­dus­try. Al­though the province has seen more than 1,000 new con­firmed cas­es per day, pre­ven­tion and con­trol mea­sures tak­en there do not ap­pear to have been as ex­treme as in oth­er places.

As has be­come cus­tom­ary, Jilin has been build­ing pre-fab­ri­cat­ed tem­po­rary wards to house COVID-19 pa­tients and those un­der ob­ser­va­tion as sus­pect­ed cas­es. The city of Suzhou, about an hour from Shang­hai, as well as Chang­sha in the coun­try’s cen­tre and Shenyang in the north­east are al­so erect­ing such struc­tures ca­pa­ble of hous­ing more than 6,000 peo­ple.

Shang­hai it­self has con­vert­ed two gym­na­si­ums, an ex­hi­bi­tion hall and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties to house po­ten­tial in­fect­ed pa­tients.

Chi­na has called its long-stand­ing “ze­ro-tol­er­ance” ap­proach the most eco­nom­i­cal and ef­fec­tive pre­ven­tion strat­e­gy against COVID-19.

The new mea­sures be­ing en­forced in Shang­hai aim to “curb the virus spread, pro­tect peo­ple’s life and health, and achieve the dy­nam­ic ze­ro-COVID tar­get as soon as pos­si­ble,” the city’s COVID-19 pre­ven­tion and con­trol of­fice stat­ed in an an­nounce­ment Sun­day evening.

That re­quires lock­downs and mass test­ing, with close con­tacts of­ten be­ing quar­an­tined at home or in a cen­tral gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­ty. The strat­e­gy fo­cus­es on erad­i­cat­ing com­mu­ni­ty trans­mis­sion of the virus as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

While of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Com­mu­nist Par­ty leader Xi Jin­ping have en­cour­aged more tar­get­ed mea­sures, lo­cal of­fi­cials tend to take a more ex­treme ap­proach, con­cerned with be­ing fired or oth­er­wise pun­ished over ac­cu­sa­tions of fail­ing to pre­vent out­breaks.

Most re­cent­ly, Hu­nan province, which has seen rel­a­tive­ly few cas­es, or­dered pun­ish­ments against 19 of­fi­cials for “fail­ure to vig­or­ous­ly con­sol­i­date an­ti-pan­dem­ic poli­cies,” state broad­cast­er CCTV re­port­ed Mon­day.

With Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic growth al­ready slow­ing, the ex­treme mea­sures are seen as wors­en­ing dif­fi­cul­ties hit­ting em­ploy­ment, con­sump­tion and even glob­al sup­ply chains. With a 21-day cur­few in place for all for­eign­ers ar­riv­ing from abroad, trav­el be­tween Chi­na and oth­er coun­tries has fall­en dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

On Fri­day, the In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion an­nounced it was mov­ing its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing from Shang­hai to Do­ha, cit­ing “con­tin­u­ing COVID-19 re­lat­ed re­stric­tions on trav­el to Chi­na.”

“It is deeply dis­ap­point­ing that we are not able to meet in Shang­hai as planned,” IA­TA Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al Willie Walsh said in a news re­lease.

Still, Shang­hai’s an­nounce­ment of the dates when the two lock­downs would be lift­ed ap­peared to show a fur­ther re­fine­ment in Chi­na’s ap­proach. Pre­vi­ous city­wide lock­downs had been open-end­ed.

Al­though Chi­na’s vac­ci­na­tion rate is around 87%, it is con­sid­er­ably low­er among old­er peo­ple who are more like­ly to be­come se­ri­ous­ly ill if they con­tract the virus.

In Hong Kong, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Car­rie Lam said the gov­ern­ment was still con­sid­er­ing next steps in what has been crit­i­cized as a halt­ing re­sponse to a re­cent fifth wave of COVID-19 in­fec­tions that has led to tens of thou­sands of cas­es and more than 7,000 deaths.

Lam said no de­ci­sion has been made on whether or when to test all 7.4 mil­lion res­i­dents of the south­ern Chi­nese se­mi-au­tonomous re­gion.

“I don’t have a timetable yet. It’s not easy to pre­de­ter­mine a timetable, in the same way that I don’t know how quick­ly the cas­es will come down,” Lam told re­porters at a dai­ly brief­ing.

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­searcher Chen Si con­tributed to this sto­ry from Shang­hai, Chi­na.