From Shanghai Daily, April 6, 2022, pp. A2-3. Complete text:
Shanghai residents should continue “staying at home” until all results of local COVID-19 screening on Monday [April 4] are released, a senior city government official said yesterday.
About 80% of the testing has been completed on the nucleic acid samples collected during Shanghai’s first citywide COVID-19 screening, according to the government.
A total of 25.67 million residents received the polymerase chain reaction test on Monday. The samples were collected in 2.427 million tubes, 1.925 million of which had been tested as of 8am yesterday.
After the results are released, the city government will quickly analyze and evaluate the situation and release follow-up prevention and control measures, said Gu Honghui, deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai government.
“Before that happens, residents are asked to continue following the current lockdown measures and stay at their homes except for medical and other emergency situations,” Gu said at the city’s daily COVID-19 press briefing.
Shanghai has reported more than 73,000 positive COVID-19 infections since the resurgence of the highly contagious Omicron variant in March.
“The pandemic is still at its peak period and the situation is extremely severe,” Gu noted.
With the support from across the country, Shanghai has been able to test 4 million tubes of nucleic acid samples every day. The follow-up processes, including transport, reporting and double-checking, have been accelerated, he said.
Any new positive case must be transported and quarantined that day. Infected people are treated with traditional Chinese medicine and new COVID-19 drugs to reduce the rates of severe symptoms and death, Gu added.
There are about 47,700 beds at local designated and makeshift hospitals for COVID-19 patients. Another 30,000 beds will soon be put into use, according to Gu.
More hotels and stadiums, as well as conference, exhibition and training centers that meet COVID-19 prevention standards will be repurposed into temporary transfer sites.
The city currently has 62 such sites for patients to receive further testing while waiting to be transferred.
Meanwhile, to ensure vital supplies during the prolonged lockdown, the city has set up 10 emergency vegetable warehouses that are connected to 50-plus vegetable planting bases and 77 key suppliers.
Supplies remain sufficient and the focus is solving the “last kilometer” and “last 100-meter” delivery, Gu pointed out.
Emergency medical channels have also been opened, primarily for those with acute diseases, pregnant women, children and people requiring hemodialysis, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
The city reported a record 268 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 13,086 asymptomatic infections on Monday.
Shanghai has entered the most arduous and critical stage of the fight against the pandemic, Wu Qianyu, a Shanghai Health Commission official, stated.
“We will stick to the ‘dynamic zero-COVID’ policy without hesitation and achieve the zero-COVID target as soon as possible,” she insisted yesterday.