Shanghai official admits to failures in virus handling

ELSEWHERE IN THE COUNTRY, PROVINCES AND CITIES SUCH AS GUANGZHOU IN SOUTHERN CHINA ARE PREPARING FOR OUTBREAKS

BEIJING: A top Shanghai official on Saturday admitted to shortcomings in the handling of the raging Covid-19 outbreak in the city as it logged a record 23,600 new cases amid a lockdown that’s straining health care and civic infrastructure.

Addressing a press conference, deputy mayor Zong Ming said the handling of the outbreak needed to improve though she praised the work of frontline medics and the support of the public. “We feel the same way about the problems everyone has raised and voiced,” Zong said at the briefing on Saturday.

“A lot of our work has not been enough, and there’s still a big gap from everyone’s expectations. We will do our best to improve,” Zong said, adding that the epidemic prevention was “at the most critical moment, and we cannot tolerate the slightest slack”.

“We will continue to have less movement and strict control, so as to block the spread of the epidemic as quickly as possible, and achieve a dynamic social clearing,” she said. Zong thanked and praised the work of medical personnel, public security officers, and volunteers for their continuous efforts.

Gu Jun, director of the city’s commerce commission, also admitted to problems in distributing food supplies and said distribution centres, supermarkets, and pharmacies should continue operating online as much as possible. A new round of Covid-19 screenings was ordered on Saturday

in Shanghai, a city of around 25 million, which reported 1,015 locally transmitted symptomatic cases for Friday. Based on the test results, the city will manage different areas as per risk levels.

Shanghai has built over 100 makeshift hospitals for Covid-19 treatment with over 160,000 beds besides eight designated hospitals with over 8,000 beds.

Elsewhere, Guangzhou is taking all prevention and control measures including citywide nucleic acid testing to detect infected cases as soon as possible, Chen Bin, deputy director of Guangzhou’s health commission, said.

Overall, the Chinese mainland reported 1,334 new locally-transmitted confirmed Covid-19 cases on Friday, down from 1,540 on Thursday, the National Health Commission (NHC) said. Of the local confirmed cases reported Friday, 1,015 were in Shanghai, 248 in Jilin, 13 in Zhejiang, and six in Beijing. The rest were reported in 12 provincial-level regions.

Friday also saw 23,815 new asymptomatic carriers on the Chinese mainland, including 23,737 local ones and 78 imported ones, the NHC said.