26,000 new Covid-19 cases as Shanghai to start easing lockdown

BEIJING: Shanghai will begin easing its lockdown in a calibrated way, officials announced on Monday even as the city reported more than 26,000 new Covid-19 infections for the day before.

The financial hub’s 16 districts are being classified according to the severity of the ongoing outbreak.

Residents will be allowed to step out of their homes if their area falls under the low risk category. Overall, mainland China, reported 27,059 Covid-19 cases for Sunday including 1,164 locally transmitted symptomatic infections

The decision to ease the lockdown in Shanghai comes amid mounting pressure from citizens facing food and medicine shortages due to stringent lockdown measures, in some city areas for three weeks now.

Shanghai, a city of around 25 million residents, will categorise residential units into three risk categories to gradually allow “appropriate activity” by those in neighbourhoods with no positive cases for a two-week stretch, senior city official Gu Honghui said on Monday.

The city has designated 7,624 closed-off management areas, 2,460 restrictive control areas and 7,565 prevention areas, Gu said. It wasn’t immediately clear how many - or when - the city’s residents will be able to experience the easing of the lockdown.

Shanghai on Sunday registered 914 confirmed local Covid-19 cases and 25,173 asymptomatic infections, the national health commission (NHC) said in its daily bulletin on Monday.

Meanwhile, the southern city of Guangzhou on Monday shut down elementary and middle schools, moving classes online after the city reported 27 new cases for Sunday, including 9 asymptomatic infections. Residents have been asked not to leave the city unless necessary, and would need a negative virus test from within the last 48 hours to do so.

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