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Residents of Qingta Street in Beijing’s Fengtai District participated in nucleic acid testing on April 26. Photo: Xinhua

Coronavirus: Shanghai’s Covid-19 cases drop for fourth day amid plans to ease lockdown

  • Shanghai reported a 20 per cent drop in new cases, marking its fourth consecutive day of declines
  • Beijing uncovered 34 new Covid-19 cases over the last 24 hours – the highest total since the Omicron variant surfaced in the capital city on April 22
Shanghai
Shanghai recorded its lowest daily number of new Covid-19 cases in more than three weeks as the city government pledged to ease lockdown measures while supporting manufacturing businesses to ramp up resumption of production.

The financial hub reported a 20 per cent drop in new cases over the last 24 hours, marking its fourth consecutive day of declines, official figures released on Wednesday showed.

Residents of Zhongguancun in Beijing lined up for testing on April 26 as Beijing launched mass coronavirus testing for nearly all its 21 million residents. Photo: AFP

New case count of 13,562 is the lowest since April 5, and new cases have fallen on nine of the past 10 days. Symptomatic cases dropped 3.3 per cent to 1,606, while 48 patients died. Cumulative infections since the outbreak began on March 1 now number 534,000, and the total death toll stood at 228.

Most deaths have been among elderly citizens with serious underlying ailments. Shanghai accounts for more than 95 per cent of the cases nationwide and the city authorities are shifting their focus to controlling risks at quarantined sites to prevent the virus from spreading into the community.

“We should double down on efforts to ward off risks in temporary hospitals, throat swab collection points, and quarantine sites when it gets windy or rainy,” Mayor Gong Zheng said in an official statement after an inspection tour in Fengxian District on Tuesday. “People’s health and safety must be safeguarded amid the outbreak.”

A medical worker collected a sample from a Shanghai resident for nucleic acid testing on April 26. Photo: Reuters

A total of 171 cases emerged in the city’s unguarded zones, or low-risk residential compounds and their surroundings, on Tuesday.

Zhao Dandan, deputy director of Shanghai’s health commission, told a press briefing on Wednesday that some low-risk zones where the societal zero-Covid goal was achieved would allow “a limited number of residents to move in designated areas” soon, without saying if more shops and restaurants would be opened.

He added that more mass nucleic acid tests would be conducted in the coming days to screen for infections, promising to improve efficiency and accuracy in the process. The city completed 51 million tests over the past five days by deploying 100,000 medical staff and volunteers to collect samples, Zhao said.

Property consultancy JLL said in a research note that it expected local authorities to relax virus control measures next month or in early June to help manufacturers resume production or speed up recovery.

The normal and smooth operation of key businesses deemed vital to the local economy, such as life sciences, semiconductor manufacturing and car makers, will top the government’s agenda once the pandemic is contained, it added.

Shanghai struggles to keep supply chains open amid Covid-19 lockdown

Shanghai, which imposed a citywide lockdown on April 1, last week gave a green light to 666 companies including Tesla and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), the mainland’s largest chip maker, to resume production in a “closed loop” manner, with workers sleeping at or near work sites to ensure zero contact with outsiders.

Shanghai had hoped to achieve a societal zero-Covid goal by April 20, bringing new infections in unguarded zones to zero. The goal eluded the authorities’ strictest controls, as the Omicron continued to spread among courier delivery workers and medical staff.

On April 11, Shanghai allowed people living in precautionary zones, those without infections in the past 14 days, to venture out onto the streets. It however reversed the decision the next day, only allowing most people in such zones to move within their own compounds.

On April 21, the city government extended a standstill order to April 26, under which movements of medical staff, health officials, delivery couriers and community volunteers in unguarded zones are curbed. No official announcement has been made on the standstill status.

In Beijing, the capital city detected 34 new cases on Tuesday – the highest total since the Omicron variant surfaced there on April 22, before the local health commission announced that another 25 infections, including one asymptomatic case, were confirmed on Wednesday afternoon.

Health authorities in Beijing earlier ordered mass tests in 10 of the city’s 16 districts after admitting that the coronavirus had spread undetected for a week. The total number of infections now stands at 113.

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