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A boy jumps rope in Shanghai.
After weeks of lockdown, millions of people are now allowed to go outside again.
Photo: Liu Jin / AFP
The week-long strict lockdown in Shanghai is apparently coming to an end: the Chinese government is gradually easing the restrictions it imposed due to the high number of people infected with Covid-19.
The quarantine has now been lifted for millions of people, they have been allowed to leave their homes and go to work.
Factories reopened, including the plant of the electric car manufacturer Tesla.
It had stood still for more than 20 days.
There are different statements about how many people are allowed to move freely again in the 25 million metropolis.
It is clear that a large part of the population is still required to stay at home.
Many people are only allowed to move within their residential complexes.
Shanghai went into lockdown in late March after thousands of new infections.
Business reopening has been slow, with residents growing desperate over food shortages and shuttered shops and businesses.
Shanghai confirms seven new deaths
At the same time as the easing, Shanghai has confirmed another seven deaths from Covid-19 and another 18,000 mostly symptom-free new infections.
According to official information, a total of 17 people died from the corona virus.
This number is disputed by some people, citing the low vaccination rate in the large older population.
Of the seven newly reported dead, all had previous illnesses such as lung cancer or diabetes, five of them were over 70 years old.
Unlike other countries, China relies on a strict zero-Covid strategy and has been largely spared the pandemic in the past two years.
Despite the currently high number of infections caused by the omicron variant, the authorities in Shanghai have long emphasized that there are no deaths from the corona virus.
The rigid lockdown in Shanghai is also threatening the global economy.
Many goods transported by ship are currently stuck.
The proportion of goods on ships that are currently not moving is almost twelve percent, almost as high as at peak times in 2021, as the "Handelsblatt" reports, citing data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW).
ktz/Reuters/AFP/dpa