COVID-19 cases in the Chinese city of Shanghai hit a new record high for the sixth straight day on Thursday. Health officials said they recorded 19,982 new cases in the financial hub, which has become the epicenter of the latest spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Shanghai health authorities said that 322 out of the 19,982 cases were symptomatic cases or those showing serious symptoms. The other people that were positively identified to have been infected showed no signs of illness. The city of Jilin in northeastern China currently has the second-highest outbreak, accounting for about 81% of cases in the country outside of Shanghai.
Since the new outbreak began on March 1, Shanghai has reported over 114,000 cases, which is more than the preceding two years combined. The figure reported on Wednesday topped the 13,436 cases registered in Wuhan on February 12, 2000, when the spread of the pandemic initially became public.
Since Sunday, Shanghai's 25 million citizens have been under a citywide lockdown to allow health officials to conduct a new round of mass testing to detect infection rates in an effort to halt the spread.
Chaos had erupted sporadically across Shanghai since the lockdowns were imposed. According to local reports, some people were fighting over food at the Nanhui quarantine center on Wednesday before police arrived to regain control.
Some locals reportedly have taken advantage of the situation to make a quick buck. Passes for passenger vehicles and trucks were advertised on the internet as a way to avoid the city's lockdown. According to Shanghai government spokesman Yin Xin, the passes were fake, and the hawker had already been apprehended by police and will be dealt with.
The growing number of cases in Shanghai, despite the citywide lockdown, is fueling fears that the mass testing program may be spreading the coronavirus by bringing people together. Mi Feng, a spokesperson for the National Health Commission, said at a media conference in Beijing on Wednesday that over 38,000 medical personnel from 15 provincial-level areas had been dispatched to Shanghai to assist with the mass testing.
On Sunday night, several Y-20 military planes carrying 2,000 medical personnel from the People's Liberation Army landed at the Hongqiao airstrip with testing equipment and protective clothing.
The outbreak in Shanghai had become so serious that the city's Communist Party had issued an open letter urging members and the city's residents to cooperate in the government's efforts to halt the spread of the disease. Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, a Politburo member, has been in Shanghai since Saturday to supervise the city's anti-pandemic efforts.
