China’s business capital Shanghai on Sunday ordered the city’s entire 26.3 million people to undergo twin tests to stop the spread of coronavirus, as the country reported 13,146 new Covid-19 cases, the highest daily increase in the number of infections in the latest outbreak.
Shanghai will conduct city-wide antigen testing on Sunday and nucleic acid testing on Monday amid efforts to contain the recent resurgence of Covid-19 cases in the metropolis, according to the local authorities.
The testing measures are aimed at completely eliminating potential risks, cutting off the chain of transmission, curbing the spread of the virus, and achieving dynamic zero Covid-19 cases as soon as possible, the official media quoted Wu Qianyu, an official with the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, as saying.
Shanghai reported 438 confirmed locally transmitted Covid-19 cases and 7,788 asymptomatic carriers on Saturday.
Wu said Shanghai was building more temporary hospitals to accommodate Covid-19 patients and major exhibition sites, including the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Centre and Shanghai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC), that are being turned into temporary hospitals and quarantine centres.
The temporary hospitals are used to treat patients with mild symptoms or those who are asymptomatic.
The World Expo centre, which was built in 2010, is now home to a 6,000-bedded temporary hospital, while SNIEC can hold about 14,000 patients, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
As Shanghai struggles to deal with the continuous rise of Covid-19 cases, Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan on Saturday visited the city to ramp up measures to fight the virus.
Sun stressed that the dynamic zero-Covid strategy must be upheld with resolute and swift action while recognising the enormous challenges that the megacity of 26.3 million people faces in both maintaining the normal operation of its core functions and battling the Omicron variant outbreak.
Last Sunday, Shanghai announced that it would impose a two-phase lockdown in the city to deal with the rising cases amid reports that local people are increasingly getting restive about the continued lockdowns and tests.
The city is the linchpin of China’s economy and is home to the country’s biggest stock exchange and major ports.
China reported 13,146 local Covid-19 cases on Sunday, including 1,455 confirmed and 11,691 asymptomatic ones, the highest daily increase in infections since the latest outbreak, which has already infected over one lakh people.
While one of the severest-hit regions in Northeast China's Jilin Province has managed to curb the epidemic, the infection curve has not seen signs of decline, and a new Omicron variant mutation was detected in East China's Jiangsu Province, neighbouring Shanghai, where the mass majority of cases in China have been found in recent days, the state-run Global Times reported.
The rapid spread of coronavirus cases in the last few months, just as many countries in the world curbed the virus and opened up, has dented China’s claims of keeping Covid-19 under check with a stringent zero-case policy.
City after the city went into lockdowns or semi lockdowns during the last few months resulting in disruption of manufacturing and supply chains in the world’s 2nd largest economy which is already in a slowdown mode.
