SHANGHAI/BEIJING: Shanghai announced onSunday further steps towards returning to more normal life and lifting a two-month COVID-19 lockdown this week, while Beijing reopened parts of its public transport, some malls, gyms and other venues as infections stabilised.
The Chinese commercial hub of 25 million aims to essentially end from Wednesday a lockdown that has severely damaged the economy and seen many Shanghai residents lose income, struggle to source food and to cope mentally with prolonged isolation.
The painful coronavirus curbs in major Chinese cities runcounter to trends seen in the rest of the world, which haslargely moved towards co-existing with the virus even asinfections spread.
Shanghai, China’s most populous city, will ease testingrequirements from Wednesday for people who want to enter publicareas, said city government spokeswoman Yin Xin, adding thesetweaks should encourage work resumption.
“The current epidemic situation in the city continues tostabilise and improve,” Yin said, adding Shanghai’s strategy wasnow “pivoting towards normalised prevention and control.”
People entering public venues or taking public transportwill need to show a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours,versus 48 hours previously.
Bus services within the Pudong New Area, home to Shanghai’slargest airport and the main financial district, will fullyresume by Monday, officials said.
Plaza 66, an upscale mall in central Shanghai that hostsLouis Vuitton and other luxury brands, reopened on Sunday.
Authorities have been slowly relaxing curbs, with a focus onresuming manufacturing.
More people have been allowed to leave their flats, and morebusinesses permitted to reopen, though many residents remainlargely confined to their housing compounds, and most shopslimited to deliveries.
The authorities approved 240 financial institutions in thecity for reopening from Wednesday, state-run Shanghai SecuritiesNews reported on Sunday, adding to a list of 864 firms releasedearlier this month. That is out of Shanghai’s roughly 1,700financial firms.
The newspaper said on Saturday that the more than 10,000bankers and traders who have been living and working in theiroffices since the start of lockdown were gradually returninghome.
Shanghai has already allowed key manufacturers in the autoindustry, life sciences, chemicals and semiconductors to resumeproduction since late April.
Gyms and Libraries
In the capital Beijing, libraries, museums, theatres andgyms were allowed to reopen on Sunday, with limits on numbers ofpeople, in districts that have seen no community COVID cases forseven consecutive days.
The districts of Fangshan and Shunyi will end work-from-homerules, while public transport will largely resume in the twodistricts as well as in Chaoyang, the city’s largest. Still,restaurant dining remains banned city-wide.
Shanghai reported just over 100 daily COVID cases on Sunday,while Beijing recorded 21, both mirroring a nationwidedowntrend.
China’s economy has shown signs of recovering its heartbeatthis month following April’s slump, but activity levels areweaker than last year and many analysts expect a second-quartercontraction.
The strength and sustainability of any recovery will dependlargely on COVID, with the highly transmissible Omicron variantproving hard to exterminate and prone to comebacks.
Investors have worried about the lack of a roadmap forexiting the zero-COVID strategy of ending all outbreaks at justabout any cost, a signature policy of President Xi Jinping. Heis expected to secure an unprecedented third leadership term ata congress of the ruling Communist Party in the autumn.
Markets expect more policy support for the economy.
“We expect policies to ease further on the fiscal front toboost demand, given downward pressures on growth and theuncertainty of the recovery pace,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrotein a Friday note.
