News - Middle East: China has condemned the United States for its ‘groundless accusations’ against Beijing’s policy on curbing COVID-19 contagious disease, as Shanghai lockdown drags on.

Despite Beijing’s zero-Covid strategy that proved undeniably effective in controlling and curbing COVID-19 contagious disease across the Asian country since early in 2020, more than 100,000 fresh cases emerged in Shanghai, China’s biggest city and a global financial hub, since March.

The new cases prompted the government to enforce phased lockdown on the city with some 26 million inhabitants, a move that incited initial complaints of food shortages and reported clashes with health workers.

Early this week, the government said that it had dispatched military and thousands of healthcare workers to help carry out COVID-19 tests for residents of Shanghai, in China’s biggest public health response ever.

The US embassy said on Saturday that it would allow non-essential employees to leave its consulate in Shanghai due to a surge of new cases, warning citizens in China that they might face “arbitrary enforcement” of virus curbs.

In response, Beijing said it expressed “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the US side's groundless accusations about China's epidemic control policy”, according to a statement issued Saturday on the foreign ministry’s website.

“This is the US's own decision. However, it must be pointed out that China’s epidemic control policy is scientific and effective,” further said Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, adding that Beijing had lodged “solemn representations” with American counterparts.

“We have full confidence that Shanghai and other places will overcome this round of the epidemic,” Zhao stressed.