KATHMANDU, NOVEMBER 20, Himalaya Airlines has announced that it will start flying to Shanghai from Kathmandu. One flight a week between the two cities will be conducted by it starting from December 2. The airline company believes that the flight will help not only in bolstering the connectivity between Nepal and China but also in […]
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Nov 6: Australian PM Anthony Albanese and Chinese President Xi Jinping will soon sit down for a drought-breaking bilateral meeting in Beijing.
Albanese, who landed in Shanghai on Saturday, is the first Australian leader to visit China since 2016.
JUNE 1: At midnight local time (16:00 GMT Tuesday), restrictions were relaxed to allow most people to move freely around the city of some 25 million people.
But at least 650,000 residents will remain confined to their homes.
China's overall policy of "zero Covid" remains in place and people catching Covid face quarantine or hospital.
Their close contacts also face the prospect of removal to quarantine and the area immediately around where they live being locked down again.
"This is a day that we dreamed of for a very long time," Shanghai government spokeswoman Yin Xin told reporters.
"Everyone has sacrificed a lot. This day has been hard-won and we need to cherish and protect it, and welcome back the Shanghai we are familiar with and missed."
E-commerce professional Chen Ying was planning to work from home after the lockdown was eased, but she told AFP news agency she might treat her two-year-old son to a long-awaited walk outside.
"We should have been free to begin with, so don't expect me to be deeply grateful now they've given it back to us," she added.
Lockdown has seen many residents lose income, struggle to find enough food and cope mentally with prolonged isolation.
Manufacturers including Western car makers Volkswagen and Tesla have been particularly impacted by the restrictions as staff were kept away from factories or had to work in "closed loop" conditions, where they lived at the plants.
A basic service resumed on public transport on Wednesday, and shops opened with larger ones operating at 75% capacity, but cinemas, museums and gyms remain closed.
Most children will not return to face-to-face schooling.
There are new rules too:
-All residents will be required to show a green health code on their smartphone to leave their home compounds or buildings and access most places
-All residents wishing to move around the city on public transport and access banks, malls etc will be required to have a negative PCR test certificate valid in the last 72 hours
-Restrictions on leaving Shanghai remain, with any resident travelling to another city facing quarantine of 7-14 days on arrival
The city has a 50-point plan aimed at revitalising its economy, which before the lockdown was worth more than $600bn (£475bn).
New measures include reducing some taxes for car buyers, speeding up the issuance of local government bonds and fast-tracking approvals of building projects.
Big bang for Shanghai
It was supposed to last just nine days -a staggered lockdown to lessen the impact on Shanghai's economy, state media said.
It lasted 65 days. It crippled the city and scarred its people.
Restrictions are now being eased as quickly as they were imposed. There's no gradual process over several weeks. Instead there's a big bang - one day when most of the emergency rules and regulations are simply being lifted.
The relief is immense - for generations of some families who've lived together behind a locked front door for more than two months; for workers who've lived in tents inside factories where they've carried on working; for the shop and restaurant owners whose livelihood ground to a halt; for the thousands of people forced to leave their homes and sent to quarantine centres.
And for the almost 25 million people who live here.
The rigidity of the lockdown caused much frustration in the city.
Marketing professional Anita Xu, 32, felt "a little caught unawares". "Even if you can go out, I don't know what you can do," she told AFP.
But Todd Pearson, managing director of Camel Hospitality Group, which operates restaurants, bars and gyms in and around Shanghai, sounded a cautious note when he spoke to Reuters news agency.
"I'm hopeful that they will rush things along to restart the economy," he said. "I just hope it's not at the cost of more outbreaks. I'm not sure many businesses or the people could handle much more."
China has registered at least 14,604 deaths and 2,426,568 cases of Covid during the pandemic, with nearly 90% of its population fully vaccinated.
Worldwide, Covid has killed at least 6,289,241 people, according to John Hopkins University research.
SHANGHAI, April 6: More than 38,000 medics from 15 provincial-level regions have rushed to China's business hub Shanghai to aid the megacity in its fight against resurging COVID-19.
Some 27,000 medics are responsible for sampling and testing work, and another 11,000 work in temporary hospitals, according to the National Health Commission.
Shanghai reported 311 confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 16,766 local asymptomatic carriers on Tuesday.
Since March 1, about 90,000 people have been infected with the highly contagious Omicron variant, data from the municipal health commission shows.
CONCERTED EFFORT
The Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station resumed its bustling scene over the past few days, with dozens of trains carrying thousands of medics and tonnes of anti-epidemic supplies pulling in. Between April 3 and 4, a total of 26 charter flights from seven provincial-level regions landed in Shanghai's two major airports.
"We were notified on April 2, immediately formed a team of 60 medics and arrived in Shanghai the next day," said Qi Qin with the Tai'an City Central Hospital, east China's Shandong Province.
"Two years ago, when Wuhan and our hospital were in the toughest moment, medics from Shanghai were among the first that arrived," said Cheng Fang, head nurse of the intensive care unit in the south area of Jinyintan Hospital, Wuhan City of Hubei Province.
"Experts from Shanghai taught us step by step how to strengthen personal protection and treat critically ill patients. Now Shanghai has encountered some difficulties. We are duty-bound and should arrive as soon as possible," Cheng said.
Many of the medical teams coming to support Shanghai have rich anti-epidemic experiences.
"Among the 28 medical staff from our hospital, some aided the anti-epidemic fight in Wuhan and some had been to Qingdao. They are the most experienced and elite forces," said Teng Tao, associate chief physician of the endocrinology department of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
"I was in Hubei for 58 days in 2020. Back then we knew little about the novel coronavirus, as we learn more about it and constantly improve our anti-epidemic measures, I'm sure we can beat it," said Gao Hongyi, a nurse from Shandong.
RESOLUTE, SWIFT MOVES
Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan on Saturday urged resolute and swift moves to stem the spread of COVID-19 in Shanghai as quickly as possible.
"It is an arduous task and huge challenge to combat the Omicron variant while maintaining the normal operation of core functions in a megacity with a population of 25 million," Sun said.
She urged that nucleic acid testing capacity and the organization of mass testing be improved as soon as possible to get a clear picture of the epidemic situation.
The megacity is under temporary closed-off management. After the completion of a mass antigen testing on Sunday and citywide nucleic acid testing on Monday, Shanghai has decided on Wednesday to launch a new round of mass testing as a fresh effort to cut off the transmission in communities and contain the latest COVID-19 resurgence.
Over 60 venues, including the over 150,000-square meter Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center, have been converted into makeshift hospitals.
The National Exhibition and Convention Center covering a total construction area of 1.47 million square meters, is also being turned into a quarantine site. Upon completion, the center with a planned capacity of 40,000 beds is expected to act as the biggest such hospital for those testing positive for COVID-19.
In the early hours of Monday, the China Flower Expo park in Chongming District opened as a makeshift hospital with over 2,700 beds and received the first batch of mild cases and asymptomatic carriers. The medical teams are from hospitals in Shanghai and Anhui Province.
After registration, the medics will confirm one by one the physical condition of the cases -- whether they have underlying diseases, developed symptoms or have been vaccinated, and make further arrangements and nursing plans.
Zhu Minghua, from the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, meticulously arranged the treatment of patients. "We must pay close attention to the possible emotions of all the people here," noted Zhu.
MUTUAL SUPPORT
The arrival of medics from outside Shanghai not only enhances the city's treatment ability but also greatly improves the detection capacity.
With the joining of 104 medics from central China's Hunan Province on Sunday, the testing capacity of a lab under Shanghai Biotecan Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. has been significantly boosted.
"As our cooperation goes smoother, we hope our daily testing capacity can soon exceed 100,000 tubes," said Wu Shouxin, head of the lab.
Zhang Yuetao and her colleagues headed for Shanghai from the neighboring Zhejiang Province at about 2 a.m. Monday. They were responsible for taking nucleic acid samples for 31,120 residents in Songjiang District before noon.
The seemingly impossible task was completed an hour ahead of schedule.
"Shanghai residents are very cooperative, even the children behave so well," said Zhang. "Zhejiang and Shanghai are members of one family and we should work together to win the war without smoke."
Residents in Shanghai flooded social media platforms to express their gratitude. Many burst into tears after seeing medics from across the country come to help. "Thank you so much for coming all the way to help us," said an elderly after having the nucleic acid sample taken at home by medical staff from Wuhan.
APRIL 6: Initially, there had been separate measures for the eastern and western sides, but the whole city is now subject to indefinite restrictions.
Shanghai is the largest single city to be locked down to date.
The important financial hub has battled a new wave of coronavirus infections for more than a month.
Reported cases have risen to more than 13,000 a day, although the numbers are not high by some international standards.
Residents in some areas of the city said the strict policy meant no-one was allowed to leave their housing compounds, not even to collect essential provisions.
They reported difficulties in ordering food and water online, with restrictions on when customers are able to place their orders, because of a shortage of supplies and delivery staff.
This country's "zero-Covid" system is, at best, struggling to cope.
China has done Covid lockdowns before, but not on the scale of its financial mega-city.
The logistical challenges required to confine 25 million people to their homes, while keeping them fed, are huge.
Social media here is full of angry residents complaining that they can't order food because the delivery system is clogged up.
Centralised isolation facilities - many using only camp beds, with no showers or other facilities - are bursting with infected people squashed in next to one another.
One of China's few reliable media outlets, Caixin, has reported that close contacts of infected people will be moved to neighbouring provinces. This could potentially involve hundreds of thousands of Shanghai residents.
The Chinese government's complete elimination strategy has become something of a mantra, with the government ridiculing other countries for sacrificing their own people on the altar of opening up.
Some medical specialists here have tried to get the message through that, for a vaccinated person, catching the Omicron variant of Covid will probably not necessitate going to hospital - that you can simply ride it out at home until you recover.
Few people in China seem to be aware of this. Their officials and state media have kept it from them.
So the lockdowns continue and it's not only Shanghai closed right now. Jilin City (3.6 million people), Changchun (nine million), Xuzhou (nine million), the steel city of Tangshan (7.7 million) and various other towns and villages are keeping their residents indoors.
The strain on people, and the economic cost of it all, must be enormous.
The city is testing the limits of China's zero-Covid strategy, amid growing public anger over quarantine rules.
The policy sets China apart from most other countries which are trying to live with the virus.
But the increased transmissibility and milder nature of the Omicron variant has led to questions over whether the current strategy is sustainable in the long run.
"Currently, Shanghai's epidemic prevention and control is at the most difficult and most critical stage," said Wu Qianyu, an official with the municipal health commission.
"We must adhere to the general policy of dynamic clearance without hesitation, without wavering."
On Monday, Shanghai reported a record 13,086 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases, after a city-wide testing programme took samples from more than 25 million people in 24 hours.
At least 38,000 people have been deployed to Shanghai from other regions, in what state media have said is the biggest nationwide medical operation since the shutdown of Wuhan in early 2020.
With inputs from BBC
SHANGHAI, April 3 (Xinhua) -- Authorities and suppliers in Shanghai have been racing to secure daily supplies to residents as the megacity, with a population of over 24 million, began temporary closed-off management in two phases to curb the recent resurgence in COVID-19 infections.
Shanghai has been working to increase sources of supplies and coordinate with suppliers to expand procurement channels to boost market supply, local authorities told a press conference.
Temporary vegetable warehouses have been set up for extra storage in the city and existing warehouses are boosting their capacity to deliver goods.
In Shanghai's Pudong District, a warehouse with the capacity to store up to 1,500 tonnes was set up, with around 200 tonnes of vegetables from across China entering the warehouse every day.
In grocery delivery platform Dingdong's Chenta Warehouse, employees have been working around the clock since March to meet the surging customer needs.
With an area of over 23,000 square meters, the warehouse is one of the largest sorting centers of fruit and vegetables in the Puxi area. Over 1 million fruit and vegetable items are sent to more than 100 distribution warehouses across western Shanghai.
Xu Huacheng, who is in charge of the warehouse, said that the warehouse has almost doubled its employees from around 300 to nearly 600 since March.
"Our supplies are overall stable, and the company has arranged more storage space for handling the surging needs," Xu said.
Before the epidemic, more than 1,000 orders were handled daily at the Qiangwei Distribution Station, which is about a 40-minute drive from the Chenta Warehouse. But, the amount has now more than tripled.
"We have increased the number of our deliverypersons from six before the epidemic to 27 now to meet the needs of the residents," said Wang Yulong, head of the station.
Local authorities have issued certificates to food suppliers like Dingdong to facilitate delivery to areas under closed-off management.
"Our distribution operation remains unaffected," Wang said. "Every day, we swing into action as soon as we wake up, so we can better serve the people."
BEIJING, July 22: Typhoon In-Fa, the sixth typhoon this year, is expected to develop into a super typhoon, which will bring heavy rains and gales to Shanghai in the following days, local meteorological authorities said Thursday.
In-Fa is forecast to move to the southeast of the East China Sea on Friday afternoon. It is most likely to land in the coastal areas of neighboring Zhejiang Province on the weekend when rains and gales are expected to lash the region.
Shanghai has already issued a blue alert for strong winds.
The meteorological department warned that vessels should return to the port for shelter and the flood prevention department should prepare for waterlogging in the city.
Affected by Typhoon Cempaka, the seventh typhoon this year, the passenger ferry service between the city of Beihai in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and the resort island of Weizhou has been suspended, according to the maritime affairs bureau of Beihai City.
More than 15,000 tourists were evacuated to safety on Wednesday.
Cempaka made landfall in the coastal area of Guangdong Province on Tuesday night, bringing strong winds and heavy rains.
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