Coronavirus in China: ByteDance’s Shanghai tower under lockdown as city seals off dozens of areas to hold the Omicron variant at bay
- Dozens of neighbourhoods across Shanghai’s 16 administrative districts had been cordoned off, and residents ordered to undergo mandatory tests
- Only Chongming island and Jinshan in the southwestern corner of the city of almost 25 million residents have yet to report suspected cases
Shanghai’s authorities ordered several districts in China’s commercial hub into partial lockdowns, as health officials sealed off neighbourhoods including the area around ByteDance’s head office to contain an outbreak of the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dozens of neighbourhoods across Shanghai’s 16 administrative districts had been cordoned off, and residents ordered to undergo mandatory tests. Only Chongming island and Jinshan in the southwestern corner of the city of almost 25 million residents have yet to report cases.
More than 320 infections had broken out across the city in the 10 days since March, threatening to blemish Shanghai’s much-lauded deftness to keep the disease at bay, where only 400 infections and seven deaths were recorded in the two years since Covid-19 broke out. Most of the new Omicron cases since early March were asymptomatic, with 23 of them reporting mild symptoms.
Still, Shanghai’s government is taking no chances, with mayor Gong Zheng vowing at a disease-control strategy meeting on Thursday to step up the city’s defences against the Omicron wave “by any means possible,” according to a city official who attended the meeting, declining to be named.
