Shanghai begins China's biggest Covid lockdown in two years
Beijing, March 28
China began its most extensive Covid lockdown in two years on Monday to conduct mass testing and control a growing outbreak in Shanghai as questions are raised about the economic toll of the nation’s “zero-Covid” strategy.
Shanghai, China’s financial capital and largest city with 26 million people, had managed its smaller previous outbreaks with limited lockdowns of housing compounds and workplaces where the virus was spreading. But the citywide lockdown that will be conducted in two phases will be China’s most extensive since the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, confined its 11 million people to their homes for 76 days in early 2020. Millions more have been kept in lockdown since then.
Shanghai’s Pudong financial district will be locked down from Monday to Friday as mass testing gets under way. — AP
