Covid-19: Shanghai allows 4 million out of their homes

Authorities in Shanghai have allowed 4 million people to leave their homes as anti-virus controls are eased.

Local media also reports that factories and businesses have reopened as well.

The 4 million are based in areas where the COVID-19 status shifted from closed to controlled, which allows them to be able to step out of their homes and move either inside their compounds or within a limited area.

In Fengxian, a suburb district south of Shanghai, 400 workers of a factory belonging to the Jala Group, a domestic cosmetic brand, have been allowed to get back to production after careful examinations from the authorities, the Shanghai Media Group reported.

The resumption of production in factories has brought back business to the farmers nearby who have started to sell their products to the canteens.

In Zhujing town southwest of Shanghai, a dozen supermarkets have reopened and the government allowed all 20 convenient stores in the area to reopen, though some of them only allow customers to buy goods at the gates, media reported.

Shanghai shut down businesses and confined most of its population to their homes on March 28 after a spike of infections.

That led to complaints about lack of access to supplies of food and medicine.

People in Shanghai who test positive but have no symptoms have been ordered into quarantine centers set up in exhibition halls and other public buildings.

Official data this week showed economic growth in the first three months of this year declined compared with the final quarter of 2021.

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