Community workers guide local residents to do nucleic acid test in Changning district of East China's Shanghai, April 1, 2022. Photo:Xinhua

The Shanghai police refuted online claims on Wednesday that a local resident was selling temporary passes, the permit that allows people in sealed-off communities to go out during the rampaging epidemic, saying that the man "was only bragging and had no ability to sell them." 

Word recently spread out online that a man in Shanghai was selling the temporary passes with the stamp of the local epidemic prevention and control office. 

Police responded on Wednesday evening that the man, surnamed Chen, is a 40-year-old staff member at a local passenger transport company. According to Chen's confession, his company has been transporting materials during the epidemic and for that reason he had the passes. Showing off to his friends, Chen took pictures of the passes and shared them in a WeChat group, claiming that he could act as an agent to apply for the passes. However, he did not have the ability to apply for the permits, Chen said. 

The matter is under further investigation, the Shanghai police said. 

Metro, a supermarket in Shanghai's Pudong area which is currently in seal-off management, said in a notice earlier on Wednesday that to implement thoroughly epidemic prevention rules services will be immediately shut down as it saw a big surge of customers with the passes.

Local residents have been posting photos on social media of long queues of people in front of the supermarket. 

A resident surnamed Li told the Global Times that she and her friends saw parts of Pudong with traffic jams while under seal-off management which "is quite unbelievable." 

Shanghai saw the largest-ever daily increase of infections after testing all its 25 million residents on Monday, with 268 confirmed cases and 13,086 asymptomatic infections, bringing the accumulated number of COVID-19 infections in the city to 73,000 since March.