Some of Shanghai's 25 million people came out for brief walks and grocery shopping today after enduring more than a month under a Covid lockdown.
Meanwhile China's capital Beijing embarked on another round of mass testing to control a nascent outbreak. Social media posts showed Shanghai residents strolling in their suburbs, or queuing up at supermarkets that had been allowed to reopen.
One picture showed two women carrying a pole with four bulky bags of groceries on their shoulders. That was the result of an incremental easing of curbs in five of the city's 16 districts from Sunday, home to about a fifth of Shanghai's population, where some people were allowed to leave their housing compounds for the first time in weeks.
The level of the restrictions varied from one residential complex to another. In many compounds, a single person from each household could go out at a time, for a maximum three hours.