Shanghai opened its largest makeshift hospital on Saturday as part of increased efforts to fight omicron as new daily infections continued to rise.
Given the current decisive and effective epidemic control measures, a research team predicts that the epidemic in Shanghai may soon subside and end in early May.
Shanghai reported 1,015 confirmed cases and 22,609 locally transmitted asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, a new record. The city has reported about 150,000 total infections since March 1.
Shanghai’s largest makeshift hospital, which can provide more than 50,000 beds, was delivered around noon on Saturday and the first batch of patients were transferred there.
Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan on Saturday called for strict measures to implement anti-epidemic measures and do everything possible to secure transportation and supply chains in Shanghai.
Sun said the city should remove logistics and distribution bottlenecks as soon as possible and let more businesses and personnel return to work with supply guarantees to stabilize both supply chains and industrial.
She inspected the largest makeshift hospital on Saturday and reviewed hospitalization procedures for patients. She urged the hospital’s management and medical teams to streamline admission procedures and improve management.
Sun also visited vegetable storage sites in Pudong on Saturday, calling for improvements in the delivery process and stressing that goods should be delivered directly to households.
In total, Shanghai had built over 100 makeshift hospitals with over 160,000 beds. There are also eight designated hospitals with a capacity of around 8,000 beds, officials said at Saturday’s press conference.
Shanghai remains in full swing in the fight against the epidemic. Since March 1, she has already performed several rounds of nucleic acid or antigen tests. From April 4-8, the city tested more than 95 million samples with a total of 94,400 positive results, city officials said at Saturday’s news conference.
