Shenzhen gets antsy as officials quell rumours of second lockdown

A medical worker in a protective suit collects a swab from a resident at a nucleic acid testing site in Nanshan district, following Covid-19 outbreak in Shenzhen.- Reuters

SHENZHEN (Bloomberg): With rising Covid cases, residents in China’s technology hub of Shenzhen are fearing a second city-wide lockdown, even as local authorities sought to quash such rumours fuelled by restrictions imposed just hours earlier in another megacity to the west.

The anti-epidemic task force of the metropolis in the southern province of Guangdong said some online posts misconstrued district-level measures such as work-from-home as a lockdown, and asked the city’s almost 18 million people to remain calm and go about their daily lives.