BEIJING (AP) — Some Shanghai residents were given permission Tuesday to leave their homes. The city of 25 million people eased a lockdown that began two weeks earlier, following the release of videos purportedly showing people breaking into a supermarket and asking for help after running out of food.
Some 6.6 million people could leave their homes, although some would have to stay in their neighborhoods, according to the online newspaper The Paper. The government said some markets and pharmacies would also reopen.
The sudden closure of most businesses and stay-at-home orders had sparked discontent over lack of access to food and medicine. Those who tested positive for coronavirus were forced to quarantine in temporary facilities, in conditions described by some as overcrowded and unhygienic.
For its part, Washington initiated what could be another clash with China by ordering non-essential government personnel to leave Shanghai, although consular staff will remain there. The Chinese government protested last week when the State Department said non-essential staff and their families could leave if they wanted.
The unusual harshness of the Shanghai lockdown from March 28 seemed motivated by politics as much as public health concerns.
The crisis in China’s richest city is an embarrassment in a politically sensitive year, in which President Xi Jinping is expected to try to break with tradition and give himself a third five-year term as leader of the Communist Party, which rules the country.
The number of infections in China is relatively low, but the government maintains a zero tolerance strategy that has isolated large cities to confine all those infected. Several local officials were sacked following allegations that they had not acted decisively enough.
The government reported 24,659 new cases as of midnight Monday, including 23,387 people without symptoms.
That includes 23,342 positives in Shanghai, 994 with symptoms. Infections in the city have exceeded 200,000 in the latest wave, although no deaths have been reported.
The government eased restrictions by announcing that residents of Shanghai neighborhoods with at least two weeks without cases could leave their homes from Tuesday. They could also go to any other area that had not had infections in that period.
Shanghai has 7,565 “prevention zones” in that category, according to local authorities cited by state media. The Paper noted that some 4.8 million people live in those neighborhoods, all but 500,000 in less dense suburbs.
Another 1.8 million people, according to the report, live in “control zones” that have not had cases in the last week and could leave, but not leave their neighborhoods. In the “quarantine zones” where infections were detected in the last week, people could not leave the house. Some 15 million people remained confined to their homes.
The report did not give data on the situation of the remaining 3.4 million people in the official census.
The sudden lockdown caught households in Shanghai by surprise, prompting complaints that they had been left without access to food or medicine or a way to care for elderly relatives living alone.
For a few days, the government distributed parcels of vegetables and other food at least twice a week to some households. Others said they had received nothing.
A video circulated online on Saturday, according to the description, showed people breaking into a supermarket in Songjiang district and taking boxes of food.
Another showed people shaking their fists at what appeared to be government employees in white protective suits. A third allegedly showed residents of apartments who were prohibited from leaving and calling for help from their windows.
The Associated Press was unable to find the source of the videos or verify where and when they were recorded. The supermarket video was associated with an account number of the popular Chinese social media site Sina Weibo, but the video did not appear on that account.
The ruling party is demanding that Chinese-language social media operators censor and remove videos and other posts on prohibited topics. Social media and internet forums were full of complaints about the closure of Shanghai and requests for help or medicine. It was unclear how many more might have been erased.
