Shanghai to ease Covid restrictions as shutdown bites businesses hard

With Covid showing no signs of slowing down, Shanghai has decided to ease some of the Covid restrictions that hit the businesses hard.

Many factories in one of China’s biggest manufacturing hubs are now opening up in closed-loop systems, where workers have to live on-site to maintain zero contact with outsiders.

According to the Guardian, Teslastaff have been ordered to sleep on site.

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Drone footage taken by Chinese media appeared to show Tesla employees arriving at the factory on Tuesday with luggage, and several people moving the frame of a Tesla car around the site, the UK newspaper reported.

Volkswagen, which restarted production at its Changchun factories after restrictions there eased, said it was still studying the feasibility of resuming production in Shanghai, Reuters reported.

The move comes at a time when the city continues to report tens of thousands of cases a day, with the majority among people in quarantine or isolation.

The city of 25 million people has been placed under strict lockdown for three weeks after a spike in positive infections owing to the Omicron variant.

The harsh shutdown, which is part of China's zero Covid policy, has badly affected the economy and thrown global supply lines into disarray.

Residents have been complaining of job losses, scarcity of food and deplorable conditions in the quarantine centres.

According to Reuters, officials had set a target of reaching “zero-Covid at the community level” by Wednesday.

More than 340,000 positive infections have been reported since Shanghai’s outbreak began in March.

On Monday, the number of new local transmissions fell to 19,442 from 21,395 the previous day, with 550 cases found outside the quarantine zones, down from 561 the day before.

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(With inputs from agencies)