Shanghai will be subject from Monday to containment by sector, in the face of a rebound in the Covid-19 epidemic linked to the Omicron variant, the government of the largest Chinese city announced on Sunday. The eastern part of the city will be confined for five days to allow the screening of its population, followed by the western part for the same duration from April 1. Shanghai has a total population of 25 million.
The metropolis has become in recent days the epicenter of a new wave of contaminations throughout China, which began to accelerate in early March. The National Health Commission reported more than 4,500 new infections on Sunday, a figure more than 1,000 lower than those recorded in previous days, but much higher than those of the past two years.
Shanghai, however, avoided total containment, as officials deemed it imperative to keep the city’s port and financial hub open, in order to preserve the national and also global economy. Although the figures for new daily cases of the virus spreading are very low in comparison with other countries in the world, they are the highest in China since the first weeks of the pandemic which had emerged in Wuhan at the end of the year 2019.
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