The Shanghai government admitted on Thursday it was ill prepared for the latest wave of Covid-19 infections and had failed to meet all the needs of areas under tough restrictions as the financial hub recorded another surge in cases on the fourth day of partial lockdown.
Ma Chunlei, secretary general of Shanghai municipal government, said in a press briefing on Thursday morning the government had handled the wave of infections poorly and it accepted all criticism from residents.
“Our awareness of the highly infectious and insidious Omicron mutant strain is not sufficient, and our preparation for the significant growth of infections was not comprehensive,” he said.
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He added that some of the necessary prevention and control measures were not in place and that the government had not been “thoughtful enough” in ensuring residents in sealed off areas had access to supplies.
“We sincerely accept your criticism and are working hard to improve it,” Ma said.
The city of 25 million people continued to record a high infection toll, with 355 local Covid-19 cases and 5,298 asymptomatic local infections reported on Thursday, the fourth day of lockdown in areas to the east and south of the Huangpu River that runs through the city.
Medical resources have been strained and basic food supplies limited, prompting residents to turn to social media in desperate appeals for help, including for patients unable to get timely dialysis or whose chemotherapy was delayed for days because they were confined to the residential area.
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Wu Jinglei, director of Shanghai Health Commission, acknowledged that residents found gaining access to healthcare difficult but said current medical resources could not meet all the needs of patients.
“The ambulance service is under tremendous pressure,” he said. “Although we have taken emergency measures to increase capacity and increased the number of emergency vehicles on duty by nearly 50 per cent and tripled the workload, we still cannot fully meet the needs of all patients.”
Wu said the commission was allocating medical resources to support dialysis for kidney-failure patients in the lockdown areas. Doctors have also been urged to prescribe up to three months of medications to reduce the need for visits.
The initial phase of the lockdown affecting 5.7 million residents runs from Monday to Friday morning this week. The second phase, affecting an area west of the Huangpu river, will start from Friday morning and run until Tuesday afternoon.
However, days of recording high numbers of cases and fresh infections found outside the quarantined population are dampening hopes of a speedy reopening. Among the new infections reported on Thursday, 1,150 were found outside the quarantined areas, suggesting a new chain of transmission and raising fears of the strict lockdowns continuing.
Liu Bin, deputy director of the city’s transport commission, said some subway routes and stops in the south and east of the Huangpu River would not resume as scheduled when the lockdown lifted on Friday. Meanwhile, all the subway lines to the west of the river will stop.
On Thursday, 8,454 local infections were reported across China, comprising 1,803 symptomatic cases – mostly found in the northern Jilin province – and 6,651 local asymptomatic infections, most of which were in Shanghai.
More from South China Morning Post:
- Covid-19 in China: ‘Don’t forget people must still live and earn as we fight Omicron,’ says Shanghai expert
- China’s manufacturing, services activity contracted in March amid coronavirus resurgence
- ‘Stick to zero-Covid’: Xinhua puts Xi Jinping’s stamp on China’s coronavirus strategy
- US authorises fourth coronavirus shot for over 50s as BA.2 subvariant spreads
- No shift in China’s zero-Covid response until big pandemic picture changes: top mainland expert
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