BEIJING (AP) — Some Shanghai residents were allowed to leave their homes after the city of 25 million eased a two-week lockdown Tuesday after videos posted online showed what was said to be people they ran out of food by breaking into a supermarket. and screaming for help.
About 6.6 million people will be able to leave their homes, but some will have to stay in their own neighborhoods, according to online news outlet The Paper. The government said some markets and pharmacies would also reopen.
The abrupt closure of most businesses and stay-at-home orders have angered the public over the lack of access to food and medicine. People who test positive for the virus are forced to live in sprawling temporary quarantine facilities criticized by some as overcrowded and unsanitary.
Meanwhile, the US government announced that all “non-emergency US government employees” would be withdrawn from its Shanghai Consulate. A Foreign Ministry spokesman defended China’s handling of the outbreak and accused Washington of politicizing its evacuation.
The unusual severity of Shanghai’s lockdown from March 28 appears to be driven as much by politics as public health concerns.
The fighting in China’s richest city is an embarrassment during a politically sensitive year in which President Xi Jinping is expected to try to break with tradition and win a third five-year term as leader of the ruling Communist Party.
China’s case numbers are relatively low, but the ruling party is pursuing a “zero tolerance” strategy that has cut off access to major cities to isolate all infected people. Some local officials were fired after being accused of not acting aggressively enough.
The government reported 24,659 new cases as of midnight Monday, including 23,387 without symptoms. That included 23,346 in Shanghai, of whom only 998 had symptoms.
In Shanghai, more than 200,000 cases have been reported but no deaths in the latest wave of infections.
The government eased restrictions by announcing that residents of areas with no cases for at least two weeks can leave their homes from Tuesday. He said they could go to any other area that also had no new cases during that time, but were urged to stay home when possible.
Such “prevention areas” have about 4.8 million people, The Paper reported, citing city officials. He said all but 500,000 of them were in less densely populated suburbs.
An additional 1.8 million people in “control areas” with no new cases in the last week are allowed to leave but are unable to leave their neighborhoods, according to the report.
Another 15 million people in “quarantine areas” who have had infections in the last week are still unable to leave their homes. The report gave no indication about the status of the remaining 3.4 million people in the official population.
The abrupt closure caught Shanghai households by surprise, prompting complaints that they were left without access to food or medicine and unable to care for elderly relatives living alone.
The government distributed packages of vegetables and other food for a few days at least twice to some households. Others said they received nothing.
A video that circulated online on Saturday showed what the caption said: people in Songjiang district breaking into a supermarket and taking boxes of food.
Another showed people raising their fists in the air in front of what appeared to be government employees wearing white hooded protective suits. A third showed what he said were apartment dwellers, barred from leaving, shouting calls for help through their windows.
The Associated Press was unable to find the source of the videos or verify when and where they were filmed. The supermarket video was tagged with an account number from China’s popular Sina Weibo social media service, but the video does not appear on that account.
The ruling party requires Chinese social media operators to censor and remove videos and other posts on banned topics. Social media and online bulletin boards are full of complaints about the closure of Shanghai and orders for food or medicine. It is not clear how many others could have been eliminated.
Complaints about food shortages began after Shanghai closed segments of the city on March 28.
The plans called for four-day district closures while residents were tested. That changed to a citywide indefinite lockdown after the number of cases spiked. Shoppers given little warning stripped supermarket shelves.
City officials publicly apologized and promised to improve the food supply. Despite that, residents said online groceries often sold out early in the day or were unable to deliver. Online trading companies said they added hundreds of employees to boost deliveries.
Last week, the State Department advised Americans not to travel to China due to “arbitrary application” of local laws and anti-virus restrictions. He cited the risk of “parents and children being separated.”
On Tuesday, a statement from the State Department said the US government decided “it is best that our employees and their families be reduced in number” due to “changing circumstances on the ground.”
A Foreign Ministry spokesman criticized the announcement, saying China’s anti-virus work is “scientific and effective.”
“The United States should immediately stop attacking China’s epidemic prevention policy, stop political manipulation on the epidemic issue, and stop smearing and discrediting China,” spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
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AP video producer Liu Zheng contributed.
Reference-www.inquirer.com