Shanghai, April. Two people familiar with the matter said Shanghai has set a goal of halting the spread of COVID-19 outside quarantine areas by Wednesday, which will allow the city to further ease its lockdown and begin to return to normal life as a public frustration grows.
The goal will require officials to speed up COVID testing and move positive cases to quarantine centers, according to a speech by a local Communist Party official on Saturday, Reuters reported.
Ending community-wide transportation has been a turning point for other Chinese locations that have closed, such as Shenzhen, which reopened public transportation last month and allowed businesses to return to work soon after that goal was met.
Shanghai has become the epicenter of the largest outbreak of the virus in China since the virus was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019, and has recorded more than 320,000 cases of COVID-19 since early March when it began spreading.
Frustrated Shanghai residents have taken to social media to express their anger at local authorities over difficulties obtaining food, lost income, separated families and poor conditions in central quarantine centers. Tensions sometimes erupted into public protests or quarrels with the police.
The Chinese economy and global supply chains are also feeling the pinch due to factory closures and transportation bottlenecks in many parts of China that have been hit by COVID-19 restrictions.
The sources, who asked not to be identified because the information was not publicly available, said Shanghai’s new goal of “community-wide eradication of the coronavirus” by April 20 had been communicated in recent days to the city’s Communist Party cadres and organizations such as schools.
China’s definition of zero COVID-19 at the community level means that no new cases have emerged outside the quarantine areas.
A speech on Saturday, the party secretary of the city’s Baoshan District, described the matter as something that came as the city’s situation reached a “critical moment” with growing public anxiety and food supply pressures.
“The working group of the State Council, the Municipal Party Committee and the municipal government requested that the turning point of the epidemic appear on the 17th day and that the state of zero COVID-19 be reached on the 20th,” Chen Jie said in the letter.
The Shanghai government and China’s State Council did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Baoshan county government could not be reached by phone outside of business hours on Sunday.
“This is a military matter, there is no room for bargaining, we can only move and fight for victory.
It can also be said that this is an all-out offensive, a last-ditch battle to reverse the epidemic.”
A resident of Shanghai
She told Reuters that the neighborhood committee sent a notification to residents on Sunday that more workers and buses were mobilized to speed up the transfer of positive cases in their compound to quarantine centers.
Pictures and videos circulating on Chinese social media on Saturday evening showed several buses lined up to keep away long lines of people who users said had tested positive for the COVID virus outside a town in Pudong District, east Shanghai. Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the posts.
Of the 23,643 new local infections reported in Shanghai on Saturday, 722 were found outside quarantine areas, according to Wu Jingli, director of the Shanghai Health Commission. He said in a press conference on Sunday that the number has decreased in the past two days.
China’s “dynamic clearance” approach to controlling COVID requires authorities to isolate all cases centrally and isolate close contacts.
Beijing authorities intervened in Shanghai in early April, after the financial center failed to isolate COVID-19 despite the city’s phased shutdown. Chinese President Xi Jinping has insisted that China must not relax the measures of the coronavirus, and must adhere to the approach to getting rid of it.
Shanghai began locking down areas east of the Huangpu River on March 28, and extended the citywide lockdown on April 1. While restrictions on the movement of some residents were eased last week, most businesses remained closed, and public transportation was suspended.
Business leaders have been increasingly vocal about the toll of the shutdowns on the Chinese economy, with automakers warning that they may have to halt production entirely if their suppliers in Shanghai and nearby areas cannot resume work soon.
On Friday, the Chinese industry regulator said it had identified 666 companies in Shanghai in the semiconductor, automobile and medical sectors as priority businesses that need to resume work.
Late Saturday, Shanghai authorities provided guidance on measures companies should take to resume production in the city, such as stockpiling medical supplies and introducing COVID prevention plans for their factories.
Reuters reported that Tesla is preparing to reopen its Shanghai factory on April 18.
SAIC Motor Corp., the Chinese partner of Volkswagen and General Motors, said it was preparing to resume production and would start carrying out “stress tests” on Monday.
MI