BEIJING, April 5 (TMTPOST)— One of the highest ranked Chinese officials highlighted the determination to contain the resurgence in Covid-19 cases after the country's largest metropolis reported record high daily cases.

Source: Visual China

Shanghai recorded 13,086 new Covid-19 confirmed and asymptomatic cases from 00:00 to 24:00 on Monday, for the first time the daily infections topping 10,000, and brought the total cases since the start of March to more than 73,000, Gu Honghui, the Director of Shanghai's working group on epidemic control and the deputy secretary general of the municipal government, said at a press on Tuesday.  

Gu explained the daily cases were the rolling up result from the recent city-wide test. The Omicron variant of Covid-19 is spreading very quickly and very hard to detect, so “Shanghai’s cases remained elevated and the situation is extremely grim”, Gu commented.

In order to win the battle against the Covid pandemic, Shanghai shall step up building the makeshift hospitals, so called mobile cabin hospital, expanding the housing for centralized isolation, and facilitating testing, quarantine, hospitalization and treatment more resolutely, with more thorough measures and more swift actions, Sun Chunlan, the Vice Premier and a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, stressed during an inspection visit to Shanghai from Monday to Tuesday. Sun noted the preparation for centralized quarantine facilities and the construction of the mobile cabin hospital were the paramount important at this moment. She urged to proceed with high urgency, faster speed and more aggression, so as to provide powerful support for the dynamic zero Covid goal.

Shanghai has set up about 47,700 beds in newly built temporary hospitals, with 30,000 more being readied, and there were 62 temporary quarantine sites that have been designated in hotels, stadiums, exhibition centers and training centers, Gu disclosed on Tuesday.

Shanghai launched a two-phase closed-management beginning from March 28, effectively dividing the most populous city in China into two-part lockdown and confining around 26 million residents to their homes. The nucleic acid testing campaign started from the eastern bank of the Huangpu River, including Pudong, Punan and adjacent areas, and some 9.1 million people had undergone the tests. The second phase test in areas west of the Huangpu River starting last Friday is set to involve a population of over 24 million. The local government didn’t announce the specific date to reopen yet.