Shanghai will relax some of its most draconian lockdown restrictions, as the city of 25 million residents prepares for a new round of mass Covid-19 testing after daily infections climbed for the eighth consecutive day to 23,624 new cases on Saturday.
The local government will conduct a new round of citywide testing, according to Vice-Mayor Zong Ming, without elaborating on a specific timeline.
Based on the test results, the city's residential compounds, villages and business locations will be classified into three types of zones - lockdown, control and precaution - with different levels of risks and corresponding measures.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
"We will implement differentiated policies with the zoning and grading, based on the analysis and results of the nucleic acid tests," Zong said at a press briefing on Saturday.
Under the city's new zoning strategy, residents living in locked-down areas will remain barred from leaving their homes, while those in control zones will be allowed to move around within their compounds.
People in the precautionary zones will be able to move around these areas. Certain essential businesses in these areas will be allowed to reopen, with limitations on the number of customers.
Zoning of areas will be adjusted based on subsequent developments in the city's Covid-19 infection situation, according to authorities.
Shanghai's Pudong district, located east of the Huangpu River, announced on April 1 a similar zoning plan, which classified most of its subdistricts into lockdown and control zones. The latest plan announced by authorities on Saturday will divide the city into even smaller grids, which would allow for more precise zoning.
The new strategy is expected to help ease supply disruptions, enabling the local government and businesses to meet the city's severe shortage of food and other daily life essentials since authorities started enforcing a two-stage lockdown on March 28.
Supermarkets, e-commerce warehouses and pharmacies in lockdown and controlled zones will be able to partly resume operations to deal with online orders, according to Gu Jun, a commerce official of Shanghai. Only nine e-commerce warehouses and 17 supermarkets across Shanghai resumed business on Friday.
Shanghai is also expected to allow employees in the express package delivery sector and other essential services to come back to work, according to Gu.