China shifts Covid-19 focus to Beijing outbreak as Shanghai’s new cases fall to 21-day low

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Shanghai’s new infections fell 12.7 per cent to 16,980, while cases with symptoms declined by almost a third to 1,661, with 52 fatalities

Beijing added 33 cases, including one asymptomatic patient, bringing the total to 71 since the Omicron variant of Covid-19 was reported in the Chinese capital on April 22

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Beijing residents outside a makeshift nucleic acid testing site during a mass testing for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Haidian district of the Chinese capital city on April 26, 2022. Photo: Reuters.

Daniel Ren

Published: 11:20am, 26 Apr 2022Updated: 1:18pm, 31 May 2022

New Covid-19 cases in Shanghai fell for the third consecutive day to the lowest in three weeks as China’s anti-pandemic focus shifts to Beijing where daily infections have set a record.

New infections dropped 12.7 per cent in Shanghai to 16,980, while cases with symptoms declined by about a third to 1,661 and fatalities reached 52, according to data released on Tuesday. That raised the total infections to 522,000 since March 1 in the city of 25 million residents.

Beijing added 13 cases on Tuesday, taking the Chinese capital’s cumulative cases since April 22 to 92. Health authorities ordered mass tests in 10 of the city’s 16 districts to find and isolate the highly transmissible Omicron variant, after admitting that the coronavirus had spread undetected for a week.

“The number of cases is set to increase, amid efforts to screen for infections in the high-risk areas that the Covid-19 carriers have touched,” said Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of Beijing’s disease prevention and control centre, during a press briefing on Tuesday, adding that two transmission chains had been spotted in eight districts.

A resident collects goods from an unstaffed delivery vehicle in a community of Jiading district in Shanghai on April 25, 2022. Photo: Xinhua

Shanghai’s battle with Omicron, after almost two months, offers valuable lessons for Beijing’s nearly 22 million residents, who have already begun hoarding food and essential supplies in anticipation of a citywide lockdown. Shanghai’s citywide lockdown of China’s financial and commercial centre since April 1 had disrupted vital supply chains, upended lives and decimated business activity.