Shanghai into 10th day of case declines, ‘ sees light at end of tunnel’

As Shanghai reported 215 local confirmed COVID- 19 cases and 3,760 silent carriers on Saturday, the 10th consecutive day of declines, China’s top epidemiologist Zhang Wenhong, among a number of other scientists, said in an article in The Lancet on Sunday that the city is “seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in this round of the epidemic.”

Some experts agreed with Zhang’s judgment, but also noted that more attention should be paid to how the relaxation of control measures will be implemented and what prevention there will be against rebounds, since people’s immunity has been weakened as a result of the long- term lockdown.

In the country’s most arduous fight against the epidemic since the Wuhan outbreak in 2020, Shanghai is at a crucial stage when, like rowing a boat upstream, it “would fall back if it stops moving forward,” local health authorities said on Sunday, after the city reported over 600,000 COVID- 19 infections in the past two months.

Li Qiang, Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China ( CPC), stressed on Saturday the need to unswervingly stick to the dynamic zero- COVID policy with focuses on reducing new cases and preventing rebounds.

With areas being lifted from lockdown and businesses resuming operation and production in a steady manner, Shanghai, once shadowed by an unrelenting Omicron wave, has seen hints of hope in recent days.

A makeshift hospital in Shanghai’s Chongming Industrial Park announced it would close on Saturday after having completed its tasks. It was used for 13 days and received 1,501 COVID- 19 patients.

While more regions in the city are welcoming a relaxation of prevention measures, experts warned that more attention should be paid to how the relaxation is implemented.

A Beijing- based immunologist told the Global Times on condition of anonymity that since Shanghai has a relatively large area of infections, with a few thousand people still being infected every day, approaches to ease the controls should be carefully considered.

A model developed by Yao Maosheng, a professor at the College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at Peking University, showed that new infections will drop below 1,000 around May 19. By the end of May, the current infection wave in Shanghai is likely to be contained, and the city will gradually lift the lockdowns by then.