Shanghai announced its first new COVID-19 cases outside quarantined areas in five days on Friday and imposed stricter curbs in two districts, but did not signal any change to the planned end of a prolonged city-wide lockdown on June 1, Trend reports citing Reuters.
The commercial hub of 25 million, in its seventh week of lockdown, has been slowly allowing more people to leave their homes in recent days, with many residential compounds issuing passes for brief walks or trips to the supermarket.
But in a sign of the challenges of China's "zero COVID" policy - at odds with the resumption of normal life in the rest of the world - authorities in Shanghai's Qingpu said on Friday it had sealed off and disinfected several places and tested more than 250,000 residents after discovering three cases.
Another district, Hongkou, on Friday afternoon ordered all shops to shut and residents to stay home until at least Sunday as it plans to carry out mass testing. It did not say why it had taken the action.
"Our district will carry out three consecutive rounds of PCR tests for everyone," authorities in Hongkou, home to more than 750,000 people, said on its official WeChat account.
"During this screening, all supermarkets, street-side shops must stop operations, everyone should not leave their homes."