Shanghai mayor says outbreak under control
Print Edition
THE recent outbreak of COVID-19 cases in Shanghai has been brought under control with effective pandemic control measures, Mayor Gong Zheng said yesterday.
A sibling of a patient, reported last week, was confirmed as a new locally transmitted case on Tuesday, according to the city’s health commission, raising the number of local cases since January 21 to 16.
All cases reported by Tuesday were discovered through screening, and the contingency plan for pandemic control had been activated immediately, Gong said.
Instead of mass testing, he said, the focus was on close contacts of the patients and the action taken was “no more than required and no less than necessary.” More than 41,000 people had been subject to screening so far, he said.
According to Wu Jinglei, director of the city’s health commission, Tuesday’s new patient has been in quarantine since last Thursday and has been asymptomatic.
The person’s close contacts have been put under quarantine, and places the person had visited have all been disinfected.
The four places the person visited are Zhaotong Road residential compound, 113 Fuxing Road M., a chess and card game room at Fushen Hotel, and 590 Shunchang Road — all in Huangpu District.
Asked about video clips widely circulated online last night featuring people dressed in protective clothing on Fuxing Road M., Wu said people shouldn’t be concerned about these.
“In these videos, our workers are just doing things like screening, epidemiological investigations, sample collecting and disinfecting the sites involved in the cases,” said Wu. “So far, all the people and environment samples investigated showed negative results.”
The Yuanchengli residential compound, close to 113 Fuxing Road M., was locked down and all residents received nucleic acid tests. Food from restaurants has arrived at the site.
Wu said the city’s 16 confirmed patients are connected to one another, indicating they’re involved in the same chain of transmission. By midnight last night, local health authorities found 380 close contacts of the confirmed patients, all of whom are under quarantine.
Ten of them tested positive and are among the 16 confirmed cases, while the other 370 tested negative.
Authorities traced 1,021 close contacts of the 380 people, all of whom tested negative. They also screened 41,038 people who have been in related areas — 41,025 tested negative, three tested positive and are part of the 16 confirmed cases, and the other 10 are still being tested.
Mayor Gong said the new outbreak had driven home the importance of cutting no slack in preventing the import of the pandemic from overseas and its resurgence at home, but the government had full confidence in further pandemic control.
“We will strive to uncover infections as early as possible to cut the source of viruses and prevent massive community transmission, while ensuring normal life in the city and reducing the influence on residents as much as possible,” he said.
The mayor said the city will increase the frequency of tests to key groups and further tightening closed-loop management. He urged residents to observe pandemic control instructions by wearing face masks, keeping social distances, and taking care of personal hygiene.
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