Over a hundred international flights scheduled to arrive in Shanghai, China’s financial hub, will be redirected to other airports across the country due to a surge in COVID-19 cases in the city.
“To ease Shanghai’s epidemic control pressure, 106 international flights, carried out by five domestic airlines, including Air China and China Eastern Airlines, will be redirected to land at 12 other Chinese cities,” said Xu Qing, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China’s transportation department.
The changes will be in effect from March 21 to May 1.
Shanghai is one of China’s busiest international transport hubs, handling nearly 40 percent of international arrivals in the country since 2020, according to the Shanghai Airport Authority.
The city of 25 million inhabitants, has been one of the regions hardest hit in the recent wave of Covid-19 infections, with more than 1.200 cases since the beginning of March. China recorded Tuesday 1,860 new locally-transmitted Covid-19 infections, down from 3,507 on Monday.
The northeastern province of Jilin has the highest tally of cases with 1,456 infections.
In Beijing, the health authorities recorded nine cases. There have been no new Covid-19 deaths and the death toll has remained unchanged at 4,636 in the country since 2020.
Since the outbreak of the new wave early March, the authorities moved swiftly to tighten control measures, including the lockdown of some cities. Large scale testing operations were carried throughout the country in a bid to contain the surge of cases.
The authorities are still busy tightening their “Zero-Tolerance” approach to combatting the virus. The strategy is largely appraised as an efficient plan that helped China contain the pandemic, save lives and keep the economy growing.
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