Downtown Shanghai heavily effected as covid out breaks surge. Museums, Theaters, and galleries closed, and refunds issued in the city of Shanghai. The majority of schools located in the inner city announced that they will be swapping to online learning as of Friday the 11th. Across China more than 100 neighborhoods have been deemed medium or high-risk danger zones, with required frequent testing and partial or complete lockdown.
China suddenly faced with a wave of outbreaks, after two years of ranking high in managing the Coronavirus outbreak. The National Health Commission (NHC) announced late Friday that “1,100 new cases had been detected nationwide the day before.”
This week the majority of cases are with people with no symptoms of being infected, Chinese officials directly attribute this to their vaccination rate, and that due to diligent testing they are uncovering infections in people who appear to be in good health. Health officials state that while this is positive, to not become complacent because of the rise in asymptomatic cases.
“From a clinical point of view, no matter whether it is a clinically confirmed case or a clinically asymptomatic infection, they are all virus-positive infected people, and they are all contagious,” said Wu Jinglei, the director of the Health Commission at Shanghai.
The Delta variant fading out as only tiny pockets of out breaks occur around the boarder of China. Most of Chinas new cases attributed to the Omicron variant are located in the cities.
The (NHC) National Health Commission publishes new cases daily a pattern of increased cases daily can be spotted. Reviewing over the reports last Friday “there were 60 cases nationwide three weeks ago, 104 cases two weeks ago, 117 a week ago and then 1,100 on Friday.”
Several entire cities in northeastern China have gone into lockdown despite urgings from national officials to be more selective in choosing how extensively to restrict people’s movements. The latest city to do so was Changchun, a large car-manufacturing center, which locked down on Friday.
China has kept the virus under tight control until now with a national system of quickly detecting and quarantining anyone with a fever, along with all that person’s contacts. Even the contacts of these contacts are sometimes required to quarantine.
Foxconn, one of Apple’s biggest suppliers, has suspended operations in Shenzhen as China locks down the technology hub and several other regions to contain the country’s worst Covid-19 outbreak in two years.
The world’s second largest economy is still doggedly pursuing its zero-Covid strategy, even as other nations reopen and try to live with the virus. The lockdowns in major Chinese cities will impact not just the country’s post-pandemic recovery, but could deliver a new blow to global supply chains.
The southern city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, is home to Chinese tech giants like Tencent (TCEHY) and Huawei. It imposed a week-long lockdown starting Monday, after recording 66 positive cases Saturday.
In its statement provided to CNN Business on Monday, Foxconn said that the “date of factory resumption is to be advised by the local government.”
Foxconn has two major campuses in Shenzhen. The Taiwanese company has “adjusted” its production line to other sites to “minimize the potential impact” from the disruption, it added. It didn’t elaborate on which locations would take on extra work.
Shares in Taipei-based Foxconn Interconnect Technology, a subsidiary of Foxconn, plunged 9.8% in Hong Kong on Monday.
China is grappling with its worst Covid outbreak since the original outbreak in Wuhan in early 2020 as cases surge across the country. On Sunday, it reported 2,125 local Covid-19 cases across 58 cities, according to the National Health Commission (NHC).
In Shenzhen, all businesses — apart from those deemed essential or engaged in supplying Hong Kong — have suspended operation or have implemented work-from-home policies.
Public transportation, including subways and buses, have been suspended in the city, which has a population of 17.5 million.
Shenzhen is also home to one of the world’s largest container ports, and any disruption there could hit an already stressed-out global supply chain. Last summer, the Yantian port in Shenzhen was forced to shut down for nearly a week after infections were found among dock workers, causing a massive backlog of goods that took months to clear and a spike in global freight rates. So far, the port continues to operate.
Shares of major companies based in Shenzhen fared poorly in Hong Kong on Monday. Tencent sank 9.8%. Telecoms firm ZTE (ZTCOF) lost 7%. BYD (BYDDF), China’s largest electric car manufacturer, fell 8.3%. And AAC Technologies (AACAF), an audio components maker, plunged 9%.
Apart from Shenzhen, local authorities have also locked down the northeastern industrial hub of Changchun since Friday, where nine million residents were forbidden from leaving their neighborhoods.
Shanghai, the country’s largest business center, has imposed stringent measures after a spike in Covid cases, closing schools and cinemas and restricting travel into the city.
These lockdowns come just months after China shut the northwestern city of Xi’an, which hit major business operations, including those of Samsung and Micron, two of the world’s biggest chipmakers.
These stringent measures taken to control the pandemic have hit China’s economy hard in recent times. Earlier this month, the government set an economic growth target at around 5.5% for 2022, the lowest official goal in decades.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/world/asia/china-covid-shanghai.html
Seko, others warn clients lockdown in Shenzhen will impact port activity – FreightWaves
cnn.com
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