Expert: Shanghai pandemic turning point round the corner
Local residents enjoy the sunshine and fresh air on Yuyuan Road.
A large majority of Shanghai's recent new local COVID-19 and asymptomatic cases were found among those who were already under quarantine, a positive sign for the city's arduous fight against the pandemic, according to Shanghai's top coronavirus expert.
The proportion of new positive cases found during the massive "grid screening" is gradually declining, accounting for only about 10 percent of the total new daily cases, Dr Zhang Wenhong, head of Shanghai's COVID-19 treatment team and director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, stated on Thursday.
It means the community-level transmission has been gradually brought under control, he said on his Weibo social media account on early Thursday morning.
"Though the turning point of the pandemic is yet to appear, Shanghai now has the conditions to embrace a turning point," Zhang insisted.
Shanghai's current key strategies against the COVID-19 pandemic include "rolling screening," "focusing on key areas" and "cutting transmission chains."
The chief target is to bring the pandemic under control, while ensuring the city is operational and maintaining basic economic activities, according to Zhang.
However, it is a great challenge for a megacity like Shanghai in the face of the highly-contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
"Shanghai has been fighting the toughest ever battle against COVID-19: the number of infections has been beyond expectations and medical resources have been strained," the doctor admitted.
Data shows that the percentage of new positive cases found during the massive "grid screening" is gradually declining, accounting for only about 10 percent of the total new daily cases in Shanghai.
Residents enjoy sunbathing at a lawn on Yuyuan Road, Changning District.
To win the race against Omicron, the city has kept enhancing its nucleic acid testing capability for a strict and more accurate screening.
According to the new COVID-19 nucleic acid testing guideline released by the National Health Commission on Tuesday, a round of screening on the key areas should be finished within one day, which is the basic condition to keep ahead of the virus, Zhang said.
China has entered a new anti-COVID-19 stage. The old strategies, such as citywide lockdown plus multiple rounds of citywide testing, will be gradually abandoned, he noted, stressing the important role of vaccinations, especially the booster shot, have played during the pandemic.
According to a new study by the School of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong, two shots of inactivated vaccines can increase the protection rate against severe COVID-19 symptoms and death to 74.1 percent for people over 60 years old.
The protection rate will rise to 95 percent for the elderly after they take the third booster shot, Zhang pointed out.
However, some social problems have popped up during the current COVID-19 resurgence, he revealed. Some residents complained about inconveniences in their communities after a long period of lockdown while some patients said they could not go to hospital, since many local hospitals were shut for COVID-19 screening.
He pledged to guarantee residents' life, ensure medical services, while protecting private and small- and medium-size enterprises amid the pandemic, otherwise "the meaning of the final success would be largely reduced."
"We shall not aim at killing the virus at the cost of our own life," Zhang averred. "Life must go on."
An increasing number of visitors can be seen on the Nanjing Road Pedestrian Mall.
Dr Zhang Wenhong, head of Shanghai's COVID-19 treatment team and director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases.
