Photo:Xinhua

As part of achieving the goal of eliminating the COVID-19 cases at the community level, Shanghai is carrying out citywide cleaning and disinfection covering 13,000 residential compounds in the city, local authority said on Monday, noting that nearly 1 million delivery packages are being disinfected every day. 

Cleaning and disinfection are one of the 10 key tasks of anti-epidemic fight in Shanghai as curbing community transmission has entered a critical stage, Liu Duo, deputy mayor of Shanghai, said at a press conference on Monday. The effective disinfection and sterilization could play a positive role in cutting off the transmission routes, and now over 6,000 professionals are engaged in the citywide disinfection work. 

Shanghai discovered 7,333 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases on Sunday, with 727 confirmed cases and 6,606 asymptomatic patients. The city's locally transmitted COVID cases had decreased for three consecutive days. 

Residential compounds especially where patients lived and public places including construction sites, office buildings, supermarkets and shopping malls as well as schools are also the major focus of the disinfection work, according to the authorities. The disinfection work involves 160,000 personnel every day, covering about 140 million square meters and 13,000 residential compounds. And nearly 1 million packages are being disinfected every day, local authorities said. 

The risk of COVID-19 community transmission in Shanghai has been effectively contained and six districts, including Fengxian, Jinshan and Chongming, have basically realized no community transmissions, Shanghai local government said on Sunday, amid the easing of restriction for more than 15 million residents.   

Liu told the press conference on Monday that the overall epidemic situation in Shanghai has been seeing positive signs as the situation has been stabilized, and the elimination of COVID-19 cases at community level has entered a critical stage. 

On Sunday, 4,242 confirmed patients and 29,468 asymptomatic patients were released from hospitals and designated quarantine places. With the collective efforts, daily new cases have been dropping from the peak number of 27,000 in April 13 to about 7,000 with the reproduction number dropping from 2.27 to 0.67, and nearly two-thirds of infections have recovered and been released from hospitals, according to local media reports. 

Global Times