China's Shenzhen eases COVID lockdown; Chengdu extends curbs
BEIJING (Reuters) -China's Shenzhen city eased a COVID-19 lockdown on Monday as infections in its latest outbreak showed signs of stabilising, while most of the 21.2 million residents of Chengdu city faced extended curbs on their movements.
An outbreak since late August prompted the technology hub of Shenzhen to order most of its 17.7 million residents to remain largely at home over the weekend and to take two rounds of tests. Bus and subway services in districts conducting tests were suspended.
By Monday, certain restrictions on dining and visits to some parks were eased and many subway stations resumed operations, in an effort to minimise disruption while adhering to the government's "dynamic COVID-zero" policy that aims at containing each and every outbreak.
Shenzhen, near the financial hub of Hong Kong, found fewer infections among those who hadn't been quarantined in recent days. The latest data showed 71 new local cases for Sunday, down from 89 a day earlier, while the cumulative figure of about 500 cases since late August is fewer than the total in the city's last major outbreak in mid-March.
But Shenzhen remains on high alert for subvariants of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, which emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
Entertainment venues are shut and large events suspended in most parts of the city, and most people are banned from visiting residential compounds unless they're on a list of people allowed in. Targeted lockdowns are imposed in areas deemed at high risk.
Most parts of Shenzhen resumed restaurants dining on Monday, though only at half capacity. Some city parks opened for half their stipulated capacity.
China has stuck to its stringent COVID policies even as most other countries have eased restrictions with the aim of living with the virus.
The approach increasingly clouds the outlook for the world's second-largest economy as the highly transmissible Omicron spreads.
Chengdu, capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, put its 21.2 million people under lockdown last week. China's biggest city of Shanghai endured two months of lockdown earlier this year.
Chengdu extended its lockdown for most people to Wednesday to enable authorities to complete another round of mass testing that began on Monday.
As of Monday morning, 88% of flights at Chengdu's Shuangliu Airport had been cancelled while the city's Tianfu Airport saw 95% of its flights cancelled, up from 62% and 79% respectively, on Thursday, the first day of the lockdown.
Flights in many other cities remain suspended.
The flight cancellation rate at Lhasa's Gongga Airport in Tibet was at 97% and Sanya's Phoenix Airport in Hainan province in the south was at 90%, while Xining's Caojiapu Airport in northwestern Qinghai province stood at 96% and Shenzhen's Baoan Airport was at 82%.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu, Sophie Yu and Ryan Woo; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
