The Shanghai Municipal Government announced late Thursday that the city will launch a thorough campaign to eliminate COVID-19 transmission in communities. It includes nine areas including community control, screening tests, traditional Chinese medicine intervention, and preventing spillovers.

The campaign, launched immediately after its release on Thursday, is in line with the requirement Chinese Vice Premier, Sun Chunlan, made during her visit to the city to unwaveringly stick to the dynamic zero-COVID strategy.

Sun, who has been inspecting the anti-epidemic work in Shanghai, urged the local authorities to take decisive moves to clear all the infections at the community level by overcoming difficulties and strengthening confidence.

More positive signs have sparked thanks to the decisive moves launched since April 15. With the epidemic situation still grave, Shanghai is now at a crucial stage to bring community transmission down to zero.

The city has set up the goals of citywide static management, all-member screening, all-round epidemiological examination, thorough disinfection, and whole-process remediation of loopholes. And to realize these goals, nine areas of tasks have been rolled out.

First, community control and management will be implemented strictly to minimize personnel flow. People in lockdown areas will continue to stay at home and have their living necessities delivered to the doors, while people in controlled areas will be asked to stay in the community. Residents in prevention zones are banned from gathering.

Those who are required to quarantine at home will have sensors placed on their doors and the health codes will turn red.

Second, the city will continue to conduct large-scale testing according to different zones and risk levels.

Nucleic acid testing will be conducted once each day in locked-down compounds, while in controlled areas, a combination of three days of antigen tests and two days of nucleic acid tests will be carried out. In prevention zones, residents will take antigen tests for four days and nucleic acid tests for one day.

Personnel who provide social services to the city, such as couriers, are required to take one nucleic acid test and two antigen tests every day.

Meanwhile, other seven tasks involving epidemiological examinations, transfer and quarantine, TCM intervention, disinfection and prevention of spillover will be carried out.

Shanghai's infection cases have been dropping for four days in a row and more people are being discharged from designated or temporary hospitals, according to media reports.

In the battle to resume economic activities, many companies in Shanghai and the broader Yangtze River Delta region are resuming operations, as officials have been rolling out a series of measures, including a "whitelist" of key businesses cleared for work resumption, to tackle logistics issues.