Disinfection campaign covers all Shanghai communities
A disinfection staff works at a local residential building where a positive case was detected.
Shanghai's ongoing disinfection campaign has covered all the 13,000-odd residential compounds along with the nearly a million online delivery parcels piled up at the gates of local communities every day.
About 160,000 times of disinfections are conducted daily across about 140 million square meters of the city as one of the key campaigns to eliminate community transmission of COVID-19, according to Shanghai Vice Mayor Liu Duo.
"Effective disinfection plays an active role in cutting the transmission of the pandemic," she told the city's daily coronavirus press briefing on Monday.
Shanghai now has more than 6,000 disinfection specialists, mainly including around 1,200 local fire-fighters, trained volunteers and professional teams from other Chinese cities. They can basically meet local disinfection demand, Liu revealed.
The vice mayor said that one of the key tasks is to ensure "terminal disinfection" at the homes of positive cases after they are transferred to quarantine sites.
The specialists disinfect their home environment and movement tracks, along with corridors, elevators and other public areas in the residential buildings. Community volunteers and property management staff take charge of disinfecting public space in the residential compounds.
Disinfection staff prepares to conduct disinfection of a residential building in Shanghai.
The citywide "preventative disinfection" also covers other key local spots, including office buildings, construction sites, wet markets, shopping malls, communities, campuses and nursing homes.
An overall disinfection must be conducted in companies, office buildings, commercial complexes, restaurants and markets before they can restore their operations, when allowed.
Residents are asked to focus on the disinfection work on group shopping and online shopping deliveries, according to the city's center for disease control and prevention.
Group shopping and online delivery staff are most likely to bring the coronavirus to local families, Zhu Renyi, an official with the CDC, noted.
Apart from that, there is no need for local families with no positive cases to sanitize the living environment every day using disinfectants, he added.
Cleaning, exposure to sunlight and ventilation remain the major ways of natural household disinfection. Tableware can be boiled, while clothes and other fabrics can be exposed to sunlight.
Liu pointed out that improper ways include spraying alcohol directly on people or putting disinfectant into sewers.
"Even if a positive case appears in the building, it has low risk of transmission as long as residents wear a mask before opening the door," he said.
A disinfection staff works at a local residential building after a positive case was detected there.
