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Some in Shanghai come out for air as Beijing resumes mass COVID-19 tests
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Workers remove their protective suits at a makeshift nucleic acid testing site during a mass testing for the coronavirus disease in Chaoyang district of Beijing, China on May 3, 2022. (Reuters/Alessandro Diviggiano)
S
ome of Shanghai's 25 million people came out for brief walks and grocery shopping on Tuesday after enduring more than a month under a COVID-19 lockdown, while China's capital Beijing embarked on another round of mass testing to control a nascent outbreak.
Social media posts showed Shanghai residents strolling in their suburbs, or queuing up at supermarkets that had been allowed to reopen. One picture showed two women carrying a pole with four bulky bags of groceries on their shoulders.
That was the result of an incremental easing of curbs in five of the city's 16 districts from Sunday, home to about a fifth of Shanghai's population, where some people were allowed to leave their housing compounds for the first time in weeks.
The level of the restrictions varied from one residential complex to another. In many compounds, a single person from each household could go out at a time, for a maximum three hours.
Most do not get permission to drive or even ride a bike, prompting jokes on social media.
One WeChat page used to organize group orders for basic necessities during the lockdown listed a donkey priced at 88,888 yuan (US$13,450) with a delivery date set after 365 years as an alternative to using vehicles to transport groceries.
"Please count me in for one of those donkey group buys," one resident commented to the post.
