Why Shanghai has not imposed a citywide lockdown

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Shanghai cannot impose a citywide lockdown despite the surge in COVID-19 cases because it plays a key role in China's economic and social development, and influences the global economy, Shanghai's top coronavirus expert said on Saturday.

Shanghai is exploring a new way to contain the spread of the highly-contagious Omicron variant at the minimum cost and the fastest speed to restore normal life, said Wu Fan, deputy dean of the Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University and a member of the city's COVID-19 prevention experts' team.

"If the city was put under a lockdown, many international cargo ships might have to wait out on the East China Sea, and the national and global economies would be impacted," Wu told the city's daily COVID-19 press briefing.

The current key strategy for Shanghai to fight against the ongoing COVID-19 resurgence is to designate the "key" and "non-key areas" according to infection risks, along with "nucleic acid testing plus antigen self-testing," she said.

She asked every citizen to take seriously both the PCR testing and antigen self-testing to make the result of the screenings more accurate.

"It is the fastest way to help to achieve zero-COVID-19 with the lowest cost," Wu said.

Shanghai has reported a surge of new positive cases recently. It reported 38 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 2,231 local asymptomatic infections on Friday, the biggest daily number since the resurgence began on March 1.

However, Wu said the ongoing screening has been effective to spot the infections, block the transmission and place the epidemic under control.

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"Without such screening, the number of new cases would rise exponentially," Wu noted.

Shanghai has launched several rounds of massive screening since last week.

More than 30 million nucleic acid tests were conducted in Shanghai between March 16 and 20 in key subdistricts and towns, which have a higher risk of infection, and low-risk areas.

Meanwhile, some 2.7 million people in the key areas have received additional rounds of testing between Wednesday and Thursday.

Over the weekend, everyone in the key areas are receiving an additional PCR test, while antigen self-testing is being conducted among other citizens.

The number of Shanghai's new local COVID-19 cases is still rising, because there is a delay between the testing and data reporting, Wu noted. It might take about three days to have a full report on a single round of PCR testing, she said.

Furthermore, some close contacts would test positive during the central quarantine. Statistics show that 85 percent of the city's new daily positive cases were found from people already under quarantine, which is key to block the transmission of the virus.

A good sign has appeared that no positive case had been detected in the city's non-key areas for several continuous days, according to Wu.

The positive detection rate has also been largely reduced among people living in the key areas, which could become important evidence to estimate the future trend of the city's epidemic, she added.

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