It should be noted that Shanghai consciously diverged from standard lockdown policy in advance of this crisis (check the article date): https://www.rfi.fr/en/sh

It should be noted that Shanghai consciously diverged from standard lockdown policy in advance of this crisis (check the article date): https://www.rfi.fr/en/shanghai-won-t-lock-down-despite-covid-spike-official https://www.rfi.fr/en/shanghai-won-t-lock-down-despite-covid... It’s quite possible that failing to strictly adhere to early lockdown was the proximate cause, and that doubling down on the policy is an appropriate solution. Another indicator for this is that other large cities/conurbations have successfully weathered the Omicron wave. So this apparent policy failure may have been caused by Shanghai trying a blended approach, similar to much of Europe, and that didn’t work.