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Coronavirus China
BusinessChina Business

Coronavirus: Shanghai adds 19,982 Covid-19 cases, setting a daily record for the sixth day

  • The number of symptomatic cases ticked up to 322, from 311 a day earlier, while the vast majority of the cases showed no symptoms
  • The Communist Party sent an open letter to rally members to help front-line health workers in Shanghai, the second such call since March 24

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Workers unload groceries from a truck before distributing them to local residents under the COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai on Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Photo: Chinatopix Via AP
Daniel Ren

Shanghai’s daily Covid-19 infections set a record for the sixth straight day on Thursday, as citywide mass testing identified 19,982 cases in China’s financial and commercial hub.

The number of symptomatic cases ticked up to 322, from 311 a day earlier, while the vast majority of the positively identified infections showed no symptoms of illness, according to the data provided by Shanghai’s health authorities.

Shanghai’s record established the city as China’s new epicentre for the latest outbreak, pushing the national caseload to 22,995. Jilin in northeastern China has the second-highest outbreak, with 81 per cent of the 3,013 cases outside Shanghai.

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The outbreak in Shanghai, caused by the highly transmissible Omicron variant of Covid-19, is becoming so serious that the city’s Communist Party sent an open letter to rally members to help front-line health workers in their quest to find and snuff out the disease. It was the second letter since March 24 by cadres in the city that was the birthplace of the party a century ago.
A health worker prepares to conduct a swab test for the Covid-19 coronavirus at a residential compound during the second stage of a pandemic lockdown in Jing’ an district in Shanghai on April 6, 2022. Photo: Agence France-Presse
A health worker prepares to conduct a swab test for the Covid-19 coronavirus at a residential compound during the second stage of a pandemic lockdown in Jing’ an district in Shanghai on April 6, 2022. Photo: Agence France-Presse

Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, a member of the party’s Politburo, has been in Shanghai since Saturday to oversee the city’s anti-pandemic work.

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