China sends military and health workers to Shanghai in biggest ever public response to Covid crisis
Shanghai reported over 9000 positive cases as the city readies to test its all 25 million residents
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Your support makes all the difference.China has sent its military and thousands of healthcare workers to Shanghai in a bid to carry out Covid-19 tests for all residents of the city.
China is facing a massive surge in Covid-19 cases lately and on Sunday, Shanghai reported more than 9,000 positive cases as the city readied to test all its 25 million residents.
The Chinese government sent in more than 10,000 health workers, including 2,000 military medical personnel, to stop the Covid-19 outbreak.
Thousands of healthcare workers from several provinces in China, including Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Beijing, arrived in Shanghai on Sunday to help with city-wide tests, state-owned Xinhua news agency reported.
Beijing also sent vice premier Sun Chunlan to Shanghai to oversee Covid prevention efforts.
Mr Sun, it was reported, ordered local officials to curtail the outbreak in China’s largest city “as soon as possible” amid the escalating crisis.
This is China’s largest public health response since its initial Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan in 2019.
China on Monday reported more than 13,000 new cases across the country in just 24 hours. Reports said that of that number, nearly 12,000 were asymptomatic.
Shanghai began a two-stage lockdown last Monday and the city has asked all its residents to get self-tests done.
The city has also converted multiple hospitals, gymnasiums, apartment blocks and other venues into central quarantine sites, including the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, which can hold 15,000 patients at full capacity.
Shanghai city official Wu Qianyu said at a press conference on Monday that children could be accompanied by their parents if the parents were also infected, but separated if they were not, adding that policies were still being refined.
An unidentified city resident said he had been taken to a central quarantine facility on Sunday night reporting a positive result on a self-test more than a week ago, according to news agency Reuters.
On Saturday, an antigen test showed that he was no longer infected but he was still taken to a quarantine facility with two patients who were both positive.
“How is this isolation? I’m not in any mood to do anything right now, I can’t sleep,” he said.
Additional reporting by agencies
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