Discontent in Shanghai increases but authorities are rooted in “covid zero” | WORLD

After two weeks of general confinement that in some cases goes back more than a month, the signs of discontent in Shanghai they multiply but for now they cannot break the authorities’ ironclad commitment to “Covid zero”.

The number of infections has not yet stabilized in the country’s largest city and its main economic center, but it has and is already declining in other major outbreaks, such as that in Jilin province, confined and isolated from everything. the country before Shanghai.

The National Health Commission reported 3,590 cases in Shanghai this Saturday, to which are added almost 20,000 asymptomatic cases that are not included in the official statistics of infections.

the eternal confinement

Meanwhile, in the western metropolis of 26 million inhabitants, the discouragement of the population increases despite announcements that restrictions will be relaxed in areas without contagion.

Although the authorities said that the inhabitants of housing complexes where there had been no case of Covid-19 in fifteen days could go out on the street as they are considered “low risk”, the truth is that in each community thousands can live. of people, which triggers the possibility that there will be a positive.

This means that a single contagion in the complex resets the counter to zero for all the neighbors, which implies another fifteen days of confinement.

Thus, scenes of confrontation of the inhabitants of Shanghai with the police and health workers continue to leak to Western social networks almost at the same speed at which they are censored and deleted from Chinese platforms, where both Twitter and Facebook or Instagram are vetoed.

Among the most notorious, a video in which residents of some state apartments for “talents” from different sectors confront the authorities after being evicted from their homes to turn them into isolation centers for Covid-19 patients or close contacts.

Group Order Heroes

Given the serious supply problems that some sectors of the population have suffered in the last two weeks, the new popular heroes are the neighbors who coordinate and manage group orders for food and other essential products.

Frank, a 32-year-old producer whose case is reported by the newspaper “South China Morning Post”, has become the savior of his community of a thousand people, many of them elderly who do not handle new technologies well.

The newspaper also cites a blogger who managed to organize an order for 10,000 eggs for her housing complex, and also cites Davida Wu, a 35-year-old investor who has also taken the reins to supply her neighbors.

“We have decided to look for life. There is too much uncertainty to trust the outside. We can’t wait forever,” the woman declared.

What happened in Shanghai has raised alarm bells in the rest of China, where fear of mass lockdowns and possible shortages has triggered sales of refrigerators, freezers and even vegetable seeds to grow at home.

During the first quarter of the year, seed sales on the most used e-commerce platforms, such as Taobao, reached record figures of up to 100% more than the previous year, according to the official newspaper “Global Times”.

“Growing vegetables on balconies in China has become a new trend, especially amid the outbreak of Covid-19. Many people have started growing vegetables hydroponically due to the shortage of vegetables caused by the pandemic.

The industry in check

The massive confinements are also having an impact on the industry, with stoppages in factories and transport that have set off the alarms of industries such as technology or the automobile industry, whose managers have warned that if the situation continues, supply chains will be affected. .

On Friday night, the local authorities of the province of Henan (center) decided to confine several areas of the Zhengzhou Airport Economic Area, where the world’s largest iPhone assembly plant, belonging to Foxconn Technology, is located.

Faced with this situation, the “Global Times” assured today in an editorial that the Western media “deliberately exaggerate” the impact of the Chinese zero Covid policy on the industry.

“These are temporary measures to resume production in a better way and make the economy and society work more effectively,” the newspaper said.

According to the accounts of the National Health Commission of China, since the start of the pandemic the country has added 178,764 infections and 4,638 deaths, the last two in March, which were the first deaths recorded in more than a year.

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