A worker in a protective suit sprays disinfectant at a COVID-19 testing site
(Picture: AP)Shanghai officials will continue with China’s “zero-Covid’ strategy by further restricting food deliveries and access to hospitals, despite the WHO advising the country to change course.
Officials appear to have walked back on efforts to ease restrictions in parts of the city, despite a drop in new infections, with neighbours of Covid cases also being forced into quarantine in some cases.
Any relaxation in prevention and control measures could allow Covid to rebound, deputy director of Shanghai’s Centre for Disease Control, Wu Huanyu, told reporters.
According to the BBC, the measures don't allow commercial food deliveries, and access to hospitals for all but emergencies must be pre-approved.
“Should we relax our vigilance, the epidemic may rebound, so it is necessary to persistently implement the prevention and control work without relaxing," Wu told a daily briefing.
The World Health Organisation’s boss, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Tuesday that China’s zero-Covid strategy was simply not sustainable.
“When we talk about the ‘zero-Covid,’ we don’t think that it’s sustainable, considering the behaviour of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future,” he said.
“And especially when we have now a good knowledge, understanding of the virus and when we have good tools to use, transitioning to another strategy will be very important”.
The ruthless pursuit of eliminating Covid has provoked rare public displays of discontent in Shanghai, where some residents have been under lockdown for more than a month.
As of Wednesday, more than 2 million people in the city remained confined to their residential compounds, while restrictions had been slightly relaxed for most of the other 23 million.
However, the easing appears to now be on hold, with teams in white protective suits entering the homes of infected people to spray disinfectant, prompting worries about damage to property.
People in some areas have been ordered to stay home again, despite being allowed out for limited shopping in recent weeks. On Tuesday, service was suspended on the last two subway lines that were still operating.
Residents have in some cases been ordered to leave their keys with a community volunteer when they are taken to quarantine so disinfectant workers can get in, a new requirement that has no apparent legal basis.
Complaints have centred on shortages of food and other daily essentials. China’s ruling Communist Party has strictly censored criticism of its controversial approach.
The entirely state-controlled media did not report on the comments by the WHO urging it to change strategy, and references to them on the Chinese internet appeared to have been removed by censors.
World Health Organisation figures have estimated China’s Covid death toll at around 15,000. The daily number of new cases in Shanghai reported on Wednesday had fallen to less than 1,500, down from a peak of 26,000 in mid-April.
