Eduardo Baptista and Laura Lin

BEIJING/SHANGHAI – Shanghai pushed forward on Saturday, with plans for a part of its transportation network to be restored. This is a significant step in exiting a COVID-19 lockdown that lasted weeks. Beijing, however, continued its defenses against an ongoing outbreak that has raged for a month.

The April lockdown in Shanghai has caused a severe economic impact on China’s largest city. It also raised questions about the viability of China’s zero COVID policy. This debate has sparked fears that future disruptions could occur.

Beijing is not the financial center, but it has resisted the urge to impose a citywide lockdown. Beijing reports only dozens of new cases every day, while Shanghai reported tens and thousands. China’s capital still faces many challenges.

While Beijing was still in COVID anxiety, workers in Shanghai disinfected subway stations and trains in preparation for the planned restoration of four Metro lines in Shanghai on Sunday.

Although service may be limited, residents will still have the ability to travel between areas and connect to the two city airports. There will be more than 200 buses that will reopen.

Shanghai officials stressed the need for caution and said that commuters will be scanned to detect abnormally high body temperature. They would also require negative results from PCR tests within 48 hours.

Shanghai had 868 local new cases Friday, as compared to 858 the day before, according to municipal health officials. This is far from last month’s peak daily caseloads.

Health authorities reported that no new cases have been found in quarantined areas. This is a decrease of three cases a day before.

A city of 25,000,000 has slowly opened shopping centers, convenience stores, wholesale markets, and more people can walk to work. In recent times, community transmissions were largely eradicated.

Shanghai tightened restrictions on two districts of 16 on Friday.

An official of the emergency bureau in the city said that authorities are urging enterprises to implement safe production.

Delta Airlines (NYSE) stated Friday that they will be resumed flying a daily service to Detroit on Wednesday from Shanghai via Seoul.

GRAPHIC COMPARISONS

While most recent Beijing cases are located in already-sealed areas, authorities were on alert and quick to respond under China’s extremely strict policies.

Fengtai (a neighborhood of 2 million inhabitants in the middle of Beijing’s counter COVID efforts) has seen bus and metro stations shut down since Friday. Residents have been told to return home.

Fengtai resident stockpiled groceries at a neighboring supermarket. Carrefour (EPA: Saturday) It is not clear if restrictions will continue.

“I don’t know if I have the time or energy to shop more over the next few weeks so I bought quite a bit of stuff and bought dumplings for my Dragon Boat vacation” (early June), she stated, not wanting to be identified.

According to the China Youth Daily, after some cases of infection were discovered, hundreds of Chaoyang residents were evacuated to quarantine.

China’s Twitter-like Weibo was quickly compared to Shanghai by social media users. Whole residential blocks were sent to quarantine centres in response to one positive COVID.

Unverified accounts of Nanxinyuan residents have attracted thousands of shares and comments on Weibo. However, an associated hashtag couldn’t be found on Weibo on Saturday. This suggests online censorship.

“Perhaps… apart from Shanghai peoples, no one will feel compassion for Beijing’s Nanxinyuan. “But, I don’t know if there will be people who see this sentence,” Shanghai-based actor Xie Liantian posted on Weibo.

Sun Shuwei is a worker at a startup tech company. He told Reuters that the Nanxinyuan situation, which was only 2km (1.2 miles) away from his Beijing home, had prompted him into considering leaving Beijing.

Sun declared, “This left me very upset.”