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The US warned of “arbitrary” Covid-19 measures in China on Saturday and said it would allow some staff to leave its Shanghai consulate amid a surge in infections in the city-state. China had kept cases low until March by enforcing snap lockdowns, mass testing, and visa restrictions, but more than 100,000 cases have been reported in Shanghai since March, putting the country’s strict zero-Covid policy to the test. Last week, the city’s roughly 25 million residents were locked down in stages, prompting complaints of food scarcity and viral videos of irate residents squabbling with officials. The US State Dept will now allow non-essential employees to leave its embassy in Shanghai “due to an increase in Covid-19 cases and the impact of response-related restrictions,” according to a US embassy spokesperson.
The statement cautioned citizens against travelling to China “due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws and Covid-19-related restrictions,” adding that the embassy in Beijing had raised its concerns with the Chinese government about the measures.
On Saturday, Shanghai reported over 23,000 new infections, the majority of which were asymptomatic, accounting for over 90 percent of new domestic infections in the country.
Thousands of new beds are being prepared in makeshift quarantine centres by city officials.
Meanwhile, residents have begun to resent the lockdown, with some taking to social media to complain about food crisis and express outrage over the recent killing of a pet corgi by medical workers.
After public outrage, an unpopular policy of separating infected children from their virus-free parents was softened this week.
However, Beijing is sticking to its zero-tolerance policy and is determined to put an end to the Shanghai outbreak, sending medical personnel from across the country as reinforcements.
Shanghai officials said on Saturday that they planned to conduct a new round of PCR tests on the entire city’s population, after which they would relax rules in some neighbourhoods if they met the strict requirement of no infections in the previous 14 days.
