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SHANGHAI (AP) — The Shanghai government said Wednesday it will take significant steps to reopen China’s largest city after a two-month COVID-19 lockdown that crippled the national economy and largely confined millions of people to their homes.
Full bus and subway service will be restored, as will fundamental rail links with the rest of China, Vice Mayor Zong Ming said Tuesday at a briefing on the city’s outbreak.
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“The outbreak has been well controlled,” he said, adding that the village would begin the phase of full recovery of the paintings and life on Wednesday.
Schools will partially reopen voluntarily, and shopping malls, supermarkets, convenience stores and pharmacies will reopen at no more than 75% of their total capacity. Cinemas and gyms will remain closed.
Authorities, who set June 1 as the deadline for the previous reopening in May, appear poised to push for what has been a slow relaxation in recent days. Some shopping malls and shopping markets have reopened and some citizens have obtained passes that allow them to pass. go out for a few hours at a time. In online focus groups, some expressed enthusiasm for being able to move freely around the city for the first time since last March, while others were cautious given the slowness and intermittent nature of the opening. .
Workers were undoing some of the barriers that had been erected along the sidewalks during the shutdown. Some other people walked or biked through the even emptier streets. last days, under the gaze of an employee or volunteer in full protective clothing.
More than half a million people in the city of 25 million people will not be able to faint on Wednesday: 190,000 who are still in lockdown zones and another 450,000 who are in areas due to recent cases.
Shanghai recorded 29 new cases on Monday, following a steady decline of more than 20,000 per day in April. Li Qiang, the most sensible official of Shanghai’s ruling Chinese Communist Party, told an assembly on Monday that the city has made great strides in the fighting. the epidemic through continuous struggle.
Success came here at a price. Authorities imposed a sweltering citywide lockdown as part of China’s “zero-COVID” strategy that aims to quell any outbreak with mass testing and isolation in centralized services of the infected.
Large transit services were installed at exhibition centers and other locations to house thousands of other people who tested positive. Health care teams and other staff arrived from all over the country to carry out the big project.
Factories were closed or only allowed to function if staff slept to prevent the spread of the virus. Reduced production at semiconductor plants has exacerbated global chip shortages. Containers blocked at the port of Shanghai due to a shortage of truckers to deliver them. to their destination.
Still, leaders of the ruling Communist Party have continually expressed their determination to stick to the “zero-COVID” policy, even as other countries have opened their borders and seek to “live with the virus. “% expansion target for this year.
However, the most recent economic knowledge showed that Chinese production activity began to recover in May when the government rescinded some blockade measures.
Schools will reopen during the last two years of high school and the third year of middle school, but students would be able to attend in person. The other categories and kindergarten remain closed.
Outdoor tourist sites will begin reopening on Wednesday, and indoor sites will remain in June, the Shanghai Tourism Authority said. Group visits from other provinces will be allowed once the city has eliminated all high- and medium-risk pandemic areas. .
Beijing, the country’s capital, further eased restrictions on Tuesday in some districts. The city imposed limited closures, but didn’t come close to the level of the entire city, in a much smaller outbreak that appears to be in decline. Beijing recorded 18 new cases on Mondays.
Associated Press investigators Si Chen in Shanghai and Yu Bing in Beijing contributed to this report.
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