Beijing May 9 2022: China’s two biggest cities tightened COVID-19 curbs on their residents on Monday, raising new frustration and even questions about the legality of its uncompromising battle with the virus.
As authorities wrestle with China’s worst COVID outbreaks since the epidemic began, authorities in its most populous city of Shanghai have launched a new push to end infections outside quarantine zones by late May, people familiar with the matter said.
While there has been no official announcement, over the weekend some residents in at least four of its 16 districts received notices saying they were no longer able to leave their homes or receive deliveries as part of the effort to drive community infections down to zero.
“Go home, go home!” a woman shouted through a megaphone at residents mingling below apartment towers at one of those compounds on Sunday.
Two residents in a fifth district, Yangpu, said they were notified of similar measures and that grocers in their neighbourhoods would be shutting as part of the effort.
Simmering public anger was inflamed by online accounts of authorities forcing neighbours of positive cases into centralised quarantine and demanding that they hand over the keys to their homes to be disinfected, which legal experts denounced as unlawful.
