Photo: CFP

Shanghai has tried its best to establish enough quarantine centers and called for residents’ cooperation during the transfer arrangements as the city is going through the most difficult time in its fight against the highly contagious Omicron variant, local authorities said on Saturday.

In a letter to residents living in Pudong New Area, the district government noted that they had built a large number of makeshift hospitals and turned some schools into quarantine centers, with the aim of moving infected people of the communities quickly. The letter also called on residents who have been infected with COVID-19 to cooperate with community workers when it comes to transfer arrangements.

Currently, the epidemic situation in Pudong is severe and complicated, with the daily number of new infections exceeding 10,000 cases for four consecutive days.

To cope with skyrocketing number of COVID-19 infections since March, the city has converted a number of public buildings into makeshift hospitals or quarantine centers, which include factory buildings, exhibition halls, stadiums, cultural centers and schools, Ding Bo, the person in charge of the city's transfer of infected people, said at Saturday's press conference.

In response to some parents' concerns over the safety of schools, Ding said once the current outbreak is put under control, authorities will carry out the most stringent cleaning and disinfection as well as safety assessment of these places.

So far Shanghai has built over 100 makeshift hospitals for COVID-19 treatment.

On how to address the difficulties residents complained about obtaining daily necessities, Liu Min, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, said the city's e-commerce platforms have gradually resumed their operation of warehouses that haven't reported any infection. Currently, the city of 25 million people has more than 18,000 deliverymen accomplishing 1.8 million delivery orders on a daily basis.

Shanghai on Saturday reported 3,590 confirmed and 19,923 asymptomatic domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases, marking the ninth consecutive day that the city's daily cases have exceeded 20,000. As of Friday, the city has recorded over 330,000 infections in this round of flare-up. 

The Shanghai health commission also reported 13 cases in severe condition, with one aged 33 and 12 aged between 70 and 93. All of them had high-risk factors such as serious underlying diseases, and none of them were vaccinated.

Despite difficulties, the city again vowed to adhere to the dynamic zero-COVID policy to achieve  containing the current outbreak in the public level, Wu Qianyu, an inspector from Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, stated on Saturday.

Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said on Friday that the city's fight against epidemic has achieved phased results, with the Rt transmission number falling to 1.23 from 2.27.

Neighboring Suzhou city of East China's Jiangsu Province, about an hour drive from Shanghai, announced to step up epidemic prevention and control measures starting from Saturday, after successive positive cases had been found among migrant workers in the area around the Suzhou Railway Station. Residents were told to stay at home if there was no emergency so as to reduce social mobility and quickly cut the infection chain.

Global Times