Beijing, Shanghai residents back to work as China limps towards living with

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Dec 26 (Reuters) – Mask-wearing Beijing and Shanghai commuters crowded subway trains on Monday as China’s two biggest cities edged closer to living with COVID-19 even as frontline medical workers scrambled to cope with millions of new infections.

After three years of harsh anti-coronavirus curbs, President Xi Jinping scrapped the country’s zero-COVID policy of lockdowns and relentless testing this month in the face of protests and a widening outbreak.

The virus is now spreading largely unchecked across the country, with doubts mounting among health experts and residents over China’s statistics, which show no new COVID deaths reported for the six days through Sunday.

Doctors say hospitals are overwhelmed with five-to-six-times more patients than usual, mostly elderly.

But after the initial shock of the policy U-turn, and a few weeks in which people in Beijing and Shanghai stayed indoors, either dealing with the disease or trying to avoid it, there are signs that life, at least for those able to cope with the disease, is on track to returning closer to normal.

Subway trains in Beijing and Shanghai were packed, while some major traffic arteries in the two cities were jammed with slow-moving cars on Monday as residents commuted to work.

“I am prepared to live with the pandemic,” said 25-year-old Shanghai resident Lin Zixin. “Lockdowns are not a long-term solution

This year, in an effort to prevent infections from spiralling out of control across the country, the 25 million people in China’s commercial hub endured two months of bitter isolation under a strict lockdown that lasted until June 1.

Shanghai’s lively streets were a sharp contrast with the atmosphere in April and May, when hardly anyone went outside.

An annual Christmas market held at the Bund, a commercial area in Shanghai, was popular with city residents over the weekend. Crowds thronged the winter festive season at Shanghai Disneyland and Beijing’s Universal Studios on Sunday, queuing up for rides in Christmas-themed outfits.

The number of trips to scenic spots in the southern city of Guangzhou this weekend increased by 132% from last weekend, local newspaper The 21st Century Business Herald reported.

“Now basically everyone has returned to a normal routine,” said a 29-year-old Beijing resident surnamed Han.

China is the last major country to move toward treating COVID as endemic. Its containment measures had slowed the $17 trillion economy to its lowest growth rate in nearly half a century, disrupting global supply chains and trade.

The world’s second-largest economy is expected to suffer further in the short-term, as the COVID wave spreads toward manufacturing areas and workforces fall ill, before bouncing back next year, analysts say.

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