At the press conference on COVID-19 prevention and control in Shanghai on the morning of April 5, Mr. Gu Honghui, Deputy-Secretary-General of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, briefed that the city is undergoing society-wide rolling testing these days. On April 4, the newly added positive cases surpassed ten thousand for the first time, totaling 13,354 cases. Since the resurgence of COVID-19 in March, over 73,000 positive cases have been reported. Due to the fast spread and stealthiness of the prevailing Omicron variant, the city faces still high number of cases under an extremely serious situation.
To contain the spread of disease as soon as possible and safeguard the people’s life and health, we started the citywide nucleic acid testing on April 4. To launch the massive testing in a synchronized manner in a mega-city of over 25 million people, we must complete a challenging task in a truly short time span, which is also a test of comprehensive capability of our city. Under the strong support of the Central Government and fraternal provinces and cities, our maximum testing capability now reaches four million tubes per day. There have been around 20,000 testing sites established across the city and approx. 50,000 testing workers mobilized. The testing was conducted in a stable and orderly manner with cooperation of our citizens. As of 08:00 on April 5, the city has seen the testing of 25.665 million people and collection of 2.427 million tubes. At current stage, 1.925 million tubes have been tested, and the others are being tested.
By strengthening the connection of sampling, delivery, testing, reporting and verification, we have cut down the sample delivery time, ensured the testing is running at its full capacity, improved the efficiency of results delivery and sped up the review of positive cases in the initial testing to achieve fast sampling, delivery, testing, reporting and verification with all efforts. In most cases, we resorted to the mixed sampling (i.e., putting multiple samples in one tube) in the massive testing. If there are samples showing abnormal results, we will start the household-by-household testing for those citizens involved. At current stage, we are rechecking those showing abnormal results in the mixed sampling.
The most pressing task after the rechecking will be the expediated transfer of cases for quarantine. If any new positive case is found, we will transfer him/her in no time to achieve the daily clearing of the cases and ensure they will be hospitalized and quarantined as appropriate. According to the ninth edition of the Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for COVID-19 issued by National Health Commission, we will do our utmost to treat the infections, enhance the classified treatment, start the TCM-based intervention, store and use new-type medicines to reduce the rate of severe cases and fatality rate with utmost efforts.
We are also trying every means to make hospital beds and quarantine rooms ready, add a number of designated municipal hospitals and build a group of makeshift hospitals with around 47,700 beds. Another 30,000 beds will be put into use soon. In the meantime, all districts are tapping their potentials to find sites including hotels, stadiums, convention and exhibition centers, and training centers that meet the requirements of disease prevention. So far, we have set up 62 temporary and transit quarantine management sites in the process of screening and transferring for all-out improvement of transfer efficiency.
In order to guarantee the basic needs of citizens, we have organized dedicated teams to support the daily life necessities, swiftly activated the emergency response mechanism to guarantee the supply of vegetables, enhanced the connection with supply of goods outside city, ensured direct supply and delivery of vegetables, created ten huge warehouses for emergency supply, and guaranteed the production and sales with 50 vegetable production bases outside city, 77 main supply bases and main vegetable production areas. Supplies of life necessities are ample at present. Our priority is to address the delivery for last one kilometer and last one hundred meters to each household. To find the solutions, we are mobilizing all parties to play a part. Both online and offline businesses including the large farmers markets, chain supermarkets and fresh grocery e-commerce actors have been organized to work with the service support teams made up of community workers, volunteers, officials sent to work in the communities and ensure that life necessities will be delivered to tens of thousands of households. For the needs of special groups including seniors living alone, we will provide more care and support to them.
We have also noticed that some of our citizens found it difficult to seek medical care recently, the authorities both in the municipality and districts are trying to satisfy these needs. The emergency rooms in medical institutions at all levels across the city are open. With the contacting mechanism between the communities and medical institutions in place, we have built a channel for emergency medical care to focus on the needs from patients of severe or critical condition, pregnant women or women in labor, child patients and patients in need of hemodialysis, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy. For patients of chronic conditions, the family doctor teams in community service centers of sub-districts will fill prescriptions and provide advice on medical care.
I would like to take this opportunity to express sincere gratitude to our citizens for your understanding, cooperation, and support. I also would like to thank our anti-COVID-19 workers, urban operation personnel, community workers and volunteers for your efforts day and night to safeguard our citizens and the city. I would like to especially thank the armed forces and fellow provinces and cities for rushing all the way to help Shanghai and deliver the strong support we need. Thank you!
Upon the receipt of the citywide testing results, we will organize specialized forces to quickly analyze and assess the current development of COVID-19 with a view to clarifying and announcing the follow-up anti-COVID-19 measures timely. So, we ask our citizens again to cooperate with our current measures and stay at home except for the necessities like seeking medical care before we have all the results. Let us work together and win this fight against COVID-19 with concerted efforts.
*Source from 上海外事