Official: China’s economy reviving as anti-virus curbs ease

Beijing : Battling the worst coronavirus outbreak since it emerged in Wuhan two years ago, China on Monday acknowledged that its economy was hit by the Omicron variant leading to lockdowns of several cities as data showed the economy shrank dramatically in April, with experts warning that the decline is yet to bottom out.
China, which prides itself on stamping out COVID-19 after it broke out at Wuhan in December 2019 before it became a pandemic causing havoc around the world with millions of deaths, struggled to deal with the Omicron Tsunami in the last few months resulting in lockdowns of several cities including its business hub Shanghai besides capital Beijing, which is currently under semi-lockdown.
Officials in Shanghai on Monday announced that they will gradually open up Shanghai, China’s largest city of over 25 million people, from June 1, ending a two-month lockdown which brought the business-industrial hub to a grinding halt.
Shanghai has cut off the community transmission of COVID-19 in 15 out of its 16 districts, the local health commission said on Monday.
The city reported 69 confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 869 local asymptomatic cases on Sunday.
From June 1 to mid-late June, Shanghai will fully restore the normal order of production and life across the city with standard epidemic prevention and control measures, while strictly preventing any resurgence of the epidemic, Zong Ming, Vice Mayor, told the media.