Shanghai’s Month-Plus Lockdown Expands to Suburbs

The month-plus Chinese coronavirus lockdown of Shanghai expanded to include nearby suburban communities on Monday, the state-run Global Times reported, revealing Chinese health officials “sealed off” residential compounds in the county of Tonglu and the city of Jiangyin after detecting fresh outbreaks of the disease in local populations.

Eastern China’s Tonglu county ordered all 450,000 of its inhabitants to undergo mandatory Chinese coronavirus testing starting May 8 and prohibited the populace “from moving freely” beginning May 9, the Global Times reported.

Tonglu county’s anti-epidemic task force issued a notice on Monday forbidding all county residents from “go[ing] out of their villages or compounds unless necessary. Those who want to enter or exit must provide negative results for nucleic acid testing obtained within 24 hours.”

Tonglu county is administered by Hangzhou, which is the capital city of Zhejiang province. Communist Party officials ordered Tonglu’s county-wide lockdown on Monday after detecting a handful of symptomatic and asymptomatic Chinese coronavirus infections in Hangzhou in recent days. These coronavirus patients “were found to have movement itineraries in Tonglu” in the days immediately prior to May 9, according to the Global Times. The Hangzhou-based and Tonglu-tied coronavirus patients “additionally had visited epicenters outside the province [of Zhejiang],” according to Tonglu county’s government.

Tonglu’s anti-epidemic task force said it erected physical barriers at the entrances and exits of residential compounds across the county on Monday to “seal off” the apartment complexes from the outside world and prevent escapes during the Communist Party-imposed lockdown.

“To curb the potential transmission of the virus, the county will strictly implement the controls on the areas in lockdown which will be sealed off with physical measures. Residents in areas under control and in precaution will be banned to gather or go out of the area,” Tonglu county’s May 9 press release read.

Outside of Zhejiang province, the Shanghai-adjacent city of Jiangyin also ordered its nearly 900,000 residents to observe movement restrictions on Monday to contain its own Chinese coronavirus outbreak.

“[A] temporary citywide traffic control has been implemented and the citywide nucleic acid screening has been rolled out,” the Global Times observed of Jiangyin’s lockdown on May 9, citing the city’s epidemic prevention and control task force.

Jiangyin is a city under the jurisdiction of Wuxi, which is a major city in Jiangsu province. Both Jiangyin and Tonglu county are located a short distance from Shanghai, which has been under its own city-wide Chinese coronavirus lockdown since April 5. Shanghai lies approximately 90 miles southeast of Jiangyin and 170 miles northeast of Tonglu county.