90 percent of precautionary areas on Shanghai's outskirts
Residents walk out from a so-called precautionary area community in Shanghai.
The COVID-19 lockdown has been initially lifted for about 4.8 million residents, mainly on the outskirts of Shanghai and within the city's "precautionary areas," where no positive cases have been reported in the previous two weeks.
According to an initial list of Shanghai's three-level areas, 10,323 local communities, villages, companies or sites have been categorized as precautionary areas, where residents are allowed to walk out from their neighborhoods.
Some 15 million residents remain under lockdown in the first batch of 11,135 "locked down areas," where positive cases were reported within a week. A seven-day lockdown plus another week of health observation will be imposed on such communities and sites.
At least 1.78 million people are allowed to move around within their communities in the 2,682 "controlled areas," where there have been no positive cases in the past seven days.
According to statistics, 90 percent of precautionary communities are in the city's suburbs, with only 500,000 residents in the precautionary areas living in downtown.
