Shanghai’s Lockdown Tests Covid-Zero Policy, and People’s Limits

Even before Shanghai imposed a lockdown to curb a rapidly spreading Covid outbreak, life for many in China’s wealthiest city had been upended by the virus — and the government’s response.

Residents raced to hoard groceries in case they were ordered to stay home. Some protested at the gates of housing complexes that were locked with little notice. Others, sent to government isolation facilities, were forced to sleep on the floor because of a shortage of beds.

For still others, the city’s Covid-19 restrictions have had life-threatening implications. Some residents have been confined at home, unable to get kidney dialysis or other urgent treatment. A nurse who suffered an asthma attack died after she was denied care by a hospital that cited Covid prevention protocols.

Officials had tried to limit disruptions by confining buildings or neighborhoods, arguing that a full-scale lockdown in the city of 26 million was untenable. Officials said their more surgical approach would curb the outbreak while preserving economic life in Shanghai, a hub for international business.

Then, on Sunday evening, the city’s officials signaled that doing both at once might no longer be feasible. The city declared a staggered lockdown that closed nonessential businesses, halted public transportation and confined the majority of the population to their homes.

The measures split the city in half, first closing the eastern section for a five-day quarantine starting Monday, before turning to a similar shutdown in the western portion. Shanghai’s caseload of 3,500 on Monday was tiny compared with much of the world, but it has been driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant. Officials said the lockdown would enable the authorities to conduct mass testing.

China has been grappling with the country’s largest outbreak since the pandemic began in Wuhan more than two years ago. The government’s fear is that an uncontrolled spread could overwhelm hospitals and cause a catastrophic loss of life. Large numbers of Chinese adults 80 and older are unvaccinated, and there is little immunity from earlier infections. Hong Kong’s struggle to contain a Covid outbreak has offered a glimpse of what that might look like: Deaths there spiked in recent weeks, particularly among unvaccinated older adults.

“The challenge is that lockdowns and nucleic testing demand manpower and medical resources in addition to their impact on the economy and life in general,” said Dali Yang, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

“The leadership is trying hard to continue the current practices but are also assessing. But Omicron may very well force the hand of the leadership” to abandon its unsustainable reliance on lockdowns, he said. The government has been working on administering vaccine boosters for the elderly and buying anti-viral drugs to prepare for such a scenario, he said.

The central government is still pushing officials across the country to stamp out the virus, deploying measures that are among the world’s strictest, including isolating anyone who tests positive and enforcing quarantines on people deemed at risk of infection. White-collar…