As the city’s official death toll grew to ten, officials begged for public assistance with a fresh Covid-19 testing blitz in an effort to prevent community transmission.
SHANGHAI, China — Shanghai officials called for public cooperation on Tuesday as the city ramped up attempts to lower community transmission down to zero after almost three weeks of lockdown with a large new drive to test the majority of the populace for Covid-19.
Some people declined to join PCR testing lines because they were tired of such restrictions after weeks of them, or because they were afraid it would put them at danger of infection.
Residents recounted reports on social media of busloads of people, including newborns and the elderly, being hauled from their homes and placed in quarantine.
“By doing several, successive rounds of PCR testing, we will be able to dynamically discover positive cases as early as feasible, allowing us to achieve zero-Covid at the community level more quickly,” said Hu Xiaobo, a city health official.
Shanghai hopes to limit the spread of Covid outside of confined regions by Wednesday, according to Reuters sources. When other Chinese cities met the goal, it constituted a watershed moment, allowing them to relax restrictions even more.
On Monday, the number of new local transmissions identified declined to 19,442 from 21,395 the day before. Outside the quarantine zones, Shanghai recorded 550 cases, down from 561 the day before and the fourth straight reduction.
Shanghai also announced that seven persons infected with Covid died on Monday, all of them were old and had underlying health issues, bringing the total number of people killed in the current epidemic to ten.
Several Shanghai locals have stated that a family member died as a result of catching Covid during the current outbreak, but that the instances were not recorded in official statistics, raising doubts about the data’s authenticity.
All positive individuals and their close connections must be tested, traced, and quarantined centrally as part of China’s Covid eradication campaign. Many more individuals are being compelled to isolate in their homes owing to their proximity to infected persons, despite the fact that tens of thousands of people have already been moved to isolation centres.
Some individuals in low-risk neighbourhoods have been allowed to roam more freely, but the great bulk of the city’s 25 million residents remain under heavy lockdown.
Shanghai has not said how it plans to open up, but it is working toward that objective by doing daily PCR and antigen testing for millions of inhabitants and speeding up quarantine transfers.
Patients have condemned quarantine institutions such as renovated schools and residential units as overcrowded and unclean.
On Monday night, photographs on social media showed elderly individuals arriving by bus outside a quarantine centre in wheelchairs, masked and wearing protective gear. Others told of relatives being carried to improvised hospitals in the middle of the night, some of whom they said were over 90 years old or newborns.
These photographs and videos were not immediately verified by Reuters.
The lockdown in Shanghai and other restrictions around China are wreaking havoc on the world’s second-largest economy in a crucial year for President Xi Jinping, who is poised to win a third term in office in the autumn.
The city is attempting to assist certain enterprises in resuming production, albeit under the strict Covid control standards that need a large number of staff.
SAIC Motor, Volkswagen and General Motors’ Chinese partner, announced Tuesday that one-shift manufacturing at its Lingang facility has resumed.
