China will impose four-day restrictions in Xi’an (north) from Saturday, when the country’s inflexible anti-COVID policy led to a clash between residents and police in Shanghai.
China, which for two years had largely brought the COVID-19 epidemic under control on its soil, has been facing its worst outbreak of the entire pandemic since last month.
Several tens of millions of Chinese have been confined, particularly in the northeast of the country, the cradle of the automotive industry, as well as in Shanghai, the economic capital.
On Friday, the metropolis of Xi’an unexpectedly announced restrictions after positive COVID-19 cases emerged. They will take effect on Saturday and are to last four days.
The 13 million inhabitants are instructed not to leave their residence and to limit their movements. Companies can, however, continue their activity but must favor teleworking, said the town hall.
Public places will also be temporarily closed and restaurants will no longer be able to accommodate customers, except for delivery.
The ancient imperial capital had been confined for a month at the end of December.
These measures come at a time when 1,400 km away, the economic capital Shanghai is facing its most serious epidemic outbreak since the start of the pandemic. Almost all of the 25 million inhabitants have been confined there since the beginning of April, with difficulties in accessing food.
On Thursday, Shanghai residents clashed with police officers who forced them to give up their apartments to isolate coronavirus-positive people there, according to several videos, a sign of growing dissatisfaction with the inflexible anti-COVID policy.
Authorities are isolating people who test positive, even asymptomatic ones, by placing them in quarantine centers. But with more than 20,000 new daily positive cases in recent days, they are struggling to keep up.
Exasperation in Shanghai
Videos posted on Chinese social network WeChat showed residents outside a residential complex, shouting at police with shields, wearing full protective suits and trying to make their way through the crowd.
In the images, police officers appear to arrest several demonstrators, while residents accuse the police of “hitting people”.
The videos caused such an outcry that Zhangjiang Group, the residential complex’s property developer, issued a statement about the incident.
He says the “situation is now calm” after “some tenants obstructed the construction” of a quarantine fence.
Authorities had ordered 39 households to leave their apartments “in order to meet prevention needs” anti-COVID, the group said.
As expected, censors deleted much of the online videos of the incident. But these were still circulating between users of social networks on Friday, AFP found.
People in Shanghai seem increasingly exasperated by the difficulties of access to food and the forced isolation of positive people in quarantine centers, with haphazard comfort and hygiene.
Demonstrations are much less frequent in China than in the West, although they occur regularly. Little publicized, they find an echo on the Internet, where the speed of dissemination of content often takes censorship by surprise.
The Ministry of Health reported more than 24,000 new positive cases in China on Friday — including more than 23,000 in Shanghai. Very high figures for the Asian country, which applies a zero COVID strategy.