Shanghai's famous Oriental Pearl Tower closes due to covid outbreaks

Beijing, 22 Mar Shanghai's Pearl of the Orient, one of the most famous skyscrapers in the Chinese city, closed its doors due to the recent outbreaks of covid-19, adding to other tourist attractions that, such as the Disneyland theme park, also temporarily ceased operations since Monday. The 468-metre-high television tower with its emblematic central structure of spherical shapes is one of the hallmarks of the “skyline” of the Chinese megalopolis and receives hundreds of thousands of visitors every year attracted by its architecture and the spectacular views offered by its viewpoints. At the moment, the skyscraper has not ventured a reopening date, along the same lines as Disneyland, which announced a “temporary closure due to the current pandemic situation” and offered refunds or date changes for those planning to visit the park in the coming days. The financial center registers the highest numbers of covid-19 infections these days since the start of the pandemic in the first half of 2020, which has led the authorities to confine entire urbanizations and communities, in addition to carrying out millions of PCR tests -30 million only between March 18 and 20-. The city also announced the temporary increase in hospitals that will treat patients with covid, who according to the Chinese health protocol are compulsorily admitted to healthcare facilities. On Tuesday, the Chinese National Health Commission reported 31 new local infections in Shanghai, in addition to another 865 asymptomatic cases that Beijing does not count as confirmed cases due to the absence of symptoms. According to the institution's accounts, since the beginning of the pandemic, 134,564 people were infected in the country and 4,638 died, two of them last week, which were the first deaths recorded in more than a year.