Surging numbers of COVID-19 cases have forced Chinese leaders to lock down important manufacturing cities including Shenzhen and Changchun. The lockdowns could impact the production of many electronics, including iPhones. The Wall Street Journal reports:
A number of manufacturers including Foxconn 2317 -1.46% Technology Group, a major assembler of Apple Inc.’s AAPL +2.82% iPhones, said they were halting operations in Shenzhen in compliance with the local government’s policy.
The government placed the city into lockdown for at least a week and said everyone in the city would have to undergo three rounds of testing after 86 new cases of domestic Covid-19 infections were detected Sunday.
While China’s case numbers are tiny by global standards, the country has adopted a zero-Covid policy that aims at nipping all outbreaks in the bud through testing and lockdowns.
Over the past two years, the world’s second-biggest economy has repeatedly locked down entire cities or sections of them, ordering factories to suspend operations as people stay home.
Such suspensions have typically lasted for several weeks as authorities worked to bring down the number of infections, causing production snags in the semiconductor, automobile and other industries.
Officials didn’t say when the lockdowns would end—in Shenzhen, officials said they would decide whether the lockdown needs to be extended after a week based on the state of the pandemic then. In recent days, daily Covid-19 infection numbers in China have hit levels not seen since early 2020, and officials have said the surge has been driven by the more infectious but milder Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Read more here.