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March 29, 2022: -China’s biggest city Shanghai started a two-stage lockdown Monday as authorities attempted different strategies to maintain growth while trying to control the country’s worst Covid-19 outbreak since the pandemic started.

Shanghai, a city of 26 million people on the southeastern coast of China, is a hub for finance and international business. The city is home to the largest container-shipping port in the world.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange remains in operation. The exchange announced on Sunday night that stock issuance applications and other paperwork could be made online, with deadline relaxations.

The city-wide lockdown measures include orders to work from home and the suspension of public transit and ride-hailing, Shanghai city announced Sunday night. Previously, specific neighborhoods had faced temporary lockdowns with controlling pockets of outbreaks.

The city said that the initial phase would run from Monday to Friday morning and apply to the city’s eastern part, where the financial center is. The second phase will apply to the western part of the city and run from Friday morning to the following afternoon on Tuesday, April 5, municipal authorities said.

“The lockdown and mandatory testing district by district in the largest city of China, key transportation hub, and financial center disrupt the city’s commercial activity,” said Bruce Pang, head of macro and strategy research at China Renaissance.

“We think that in the near term, China will stick to its zero-tolerance approach, pursuing a zero-Covid position as one of the strictest virus elimination policies of the world,” Pang said.

According to Bloomberg, according to sources, Tesla, whose Shanghai factory is located in the area covered by the first stage of the lockdown, reportedly halted production for nearly a day.

The emergence of the is transmissible omicron variant has made controlling outbreaks harder and increased uncertainty for business operations. Local governments across China have attributed the rest wave of cases to the omicron subvariant BA.2.

China has stuck to a strategy of lockdowns and quarantines to control. Covid outbreaks are maintaining economic growth. The policy helped the country rebound from the starting shock of the pandemic in 2020, with relatively few infections and deaths compared with different parts of the world.