China's Shanghai to ease lockdown despite rising Covid-19 cases

Authorities in China's financial centre of Shanghai will start easing lockdown in some areas, despite reporting a record of more than 25,000 new Covid-19 infections.

Shanghai has classed residential units into three risk categories, to allow those in areas with no positive cases during a two-week stretch to engage in "appropriate activity", city official Gu Honghui said on Monday.

"Each district will announce the specific names of the first batch (of communities) divided into the three types, and three subsequent lists will be announced in a timely manner," he told a news briefing.

That promises relief for some of the city's 25 million residents, many of whom struggled to find food and medicine after more than three weeks locked down.

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Risk categories

One of the first districts to release its list was southwestern Jinshan, which posted the names of residential areas still in the high and medium-risk categories in its official channel on messaging app Weibo.

Gu said Shanghai had divided the city into 7,624 areas that are still sealed off.

As well as a group of 2,460 now subject to "controls" after a week of no new infections, and 7,565 "prevention areas" that will be opened up after two weeks without a positive case.

Those living in "prevention areas", though able to move around their neighbourhoods, must observe social distancing and could find themselves sealed off again if there are new infections, he said.

Shanghai would make "dynamic" adjustments to the new system, Gu added, vowing greater efforts to minimise the impact of curbs on ordinary people in China's most populous city.

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