Coronavirus: Shanghai to expand app tracking to guard against Covid-19 resurgence, as city marks third day without community spread
- Schools, parks, office buildings and residential compounds will require health-app scans for entry when the city’s lockdown starts to ease on June 1
- Shanghai recorded a 10 per cent drop in new cases in the last 24 hours, and found no infections outside quarantined zones for the third straight day
Individuals will be barred from entering schools, parks, office buildings and residential compounds without scanning a QR code in the local health app to gain access, the municipal government announced on Monday.
Zhu Junwei, deputy director of the Shanghai Big Data Centre, told a press briefing on Monday that public venues and residents failing to abide by the rules governing the digital health-code system will face punishment. He did not elaborate.
“Schools, companies and residential complexes that do not use the digital pass system are not allowed to reopen,” he said.
The city discovered 558 infections over the past 24 hours, 10.3 per cent fewer than a day earlier, according to data released on Monday. No infections were recorded outside quarantined zones for the third consecutive day, while symptomatic cases rose 5.8 per cent to 55. One patient died, taking the total death toll to 585, or 0.09 per cent of the 625,000 people who have been infected since March 1 in one of China’s largest population centres.