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Shanghai
BusinessChina Business

Coronavirus: Shanghai’s Covid-19 cases drop for fourth day amid plans to ease lockdown

  • Shanghai reported a 20 per cent drop in new cases, marking its fourth consecutive day of declines
  • Beijing uncovered 34 new Covid-19 cases over the last 24 hours – the highest total since the Omicron variant surfaced in the capital city on April 22

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Residents of Qingta Street in Beijing’s Fengtai District participated in nucleic acid testing on April 26. Photo: Xinhua
Daniel Ren
Shanghai recorded its lowest daily number of new Covid-19 cases in more than three weeks as the city government pledged to ease lockdown measures while supporting manufacturing businesses to ramp up resumption of production.
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The financial hub reported a 20 per cent drop in new cases over the last 24 hours, marking its fourth consecutive day of declines, official figures released on Wednesday showed.

Residents of Zhongguancun in Beijing lined up for testing on April 26 as Beijing launched mass coronavirus testing for nearly all its 21 million residents. Photo: AFP
Residents of Zhongguancun in Beijing lined up for testing on April 26 as Beijing launched mass coronavirus testing for nearly all its 21 million residents. Photo: AFP

New case count of 13,562 is the lowest since April 5, and new cases have fallen on nine of the past 10 days. Symptomatic cases dropped 3.3 per cent to 1,606, while 48 patients died. Cumulative infections since the outbreak began on March 1 now number 534,000, and the total death toll stood at 228.

Most deaths have been among elderly citizens with serious underlying ailments. Shanghai accounts for more than 95 per cent of the cases nationwide and the city authorities are shifting their focus to controlling risks at quarantined sites to prevent the virus from spreading into the community.

“We should double down on efforts to ward off risks in temporary hospitals, throat swab collection points, and quarantine sites when it gets windy or rainy,” Mayor Gong Zheng said in an official statement after an inspection tour in Fengxian District on Tuesday. “People’s health and safety must be safeguarded amid the outbreak.”

A medical worker collected a sample from a Shanghai resident for nucleic acid testing on April 26. Photo: Reuters
A medical worker collected a sample from a Shanghai resident for nucleic acid testing on April 26. Photo: Reuters

A total of 171 cases emerged in the city’s unguarded zones, or low-risk residential compounds and their surroundings, on Tuesday.

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