In the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai, the authorities have promised gradual easing after weeks of a strict lockdown. Shopping centers and hairdressing salons could reopen, said the vice mayor of the city of 25 million, Chen Tong, on Sunday.

Department stores and supermarkets should allow customers to shop in an “orderly manner”. Limited capacities are planned for hairdressers and vegetable markets. Details on the pace of the openings and the range were not given.

Many citizens of the economic metropolis reacted skeptically in online networks. “Who are you lying to? We can’t even leave our property,” wrote a user from Shanghai on the Chinese Twitter counterpart Weibo.

For weeks, the city’s residents have only been allowed to buy the bare essentials, online purchases can no longer be delivered because couriers have to stay at home and companies are therefore not available. Many German companies in China felt downright trapped, the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce recently reported.

According to official figures, the number of new infections with the corona virus in the city fell to 1,369 on Sunday; at the end of April it was still over 25,000.

At the beginning of April, the authorities imposed drastic restrictions in Shanghai due to an outbreak of the omicron variant of the corona virus, which made it extremely difficult to supply the approximately 25 million residents with fresh food and had an impact on global supply chains. Due to the restrictions, there was great dissatisfaction among the population, which citizens expressed in online videos, among other things.