The Story:
Late on Sunday, March 27, municipal authorities in Shanghai, a Chinese coastal city and financial hub with a population close to 25 million people, announced that they were taking emergency measures to cope with an outbreak of Covid-19.
On April 4, the authorities said that Shanghai will remain under lockdown as it reviews results of tests on all 26 million residents of its COVID-19.
Significance:
The lockdown began on the eastern side of the city. The eastern and western halves of the city are defined by the river passing through it, the Huangpu.
In order to separate the two halves, the government closed bridges and tunnels and restricting traffic on the highways.
As of April 1, the lockdown shifted to the western half. Delivery services and grocery stores had by then been overwhelmed by the efforts of millions of people to stockpile food before the month ended.
In Pill Form:
The situation has reminded the world at large that, though the pandemic has eased in some parts of the globe, it has not gone away.
When Shanghai’s lockdown began, the number of new daily cases of Covid reported in Shanghai exceeded 4,400. It has since risen to above 8,000 daily, although most of the new reports are asymptotic.
