Puxi Lockdown Extended Until Further Notice

According to an announcement made on the city government's official WeChat platform, the lockdown policy currently in place in Puxi will be extended beyond tonight's 3am, April 5 deadline, into the ensuing... well... hopefully days?

Let's hope days...

The official line in the announcement translates to: "After the above work is completed [assessing the latest round of city-wide nucleic acid testing], the follow up control measures will be clarified in accordance with relevant national regulations, combined with screening results."

So, basically: "we're still dealing with today's tests. We'll look at those and let you know."

But you probably saw this coming. After the announcement that the second round of Puxi-wide nucleic acid testing was postponed to one day later (from April 3 to April 4) it was quite obvious that the lockdown wouldn't end at 3am on April 5 as originally scheduled. It doesn't make sense to test the entire city and then let them out before the results are in.

Now the official statement is out, Puxi's lockdown has been extended...

Bummer.

No official reason was given for the delay of the city-wide testing and the extension of the lockdown. Rumors range from technical issues with the HealthCloud (unlikely) to operationally issues with the testing which would require the city to gather more health care professionals (more likely). Just yesterday it was announced that 2,000 medical staff from North China's Tianjin will be dispatched to Shanghai in the fight against Omicron.

Meet back here tomorrow?