​​Two Staged Disease Containment in Communities

At the press conference on COVID-19 prevention and control in Shanghai held on the morning of May 22, Mr. Zhao Dandan, Deputy-Director-General of Shanghai Municipal Health Commission reported that the city added 52 new local cases and 570 local asymptomatic ones on May 21. Among the 52 confirmed cases, 23 were found in the closed loop quarantine and 29 were former asymptomatic cases. All the 570 local asymptomatic cases were found in the closed loop quarantine.

As of 24:00 on May 21, we have 140 severe cases and 39 critical ones receiving treatment in designated medical institutions.

On May 21, Shanghai added three deaths. The average age of them was 81.3 years old. All of them were unvaccinated and suffered from serious acute or chronic underlying conditions including cerebral trauma, remote cerebral infarction, vascular dementia, hypertension, diabetes, hypostatic pneumonia, and fracture of neck of femur. After admission to hospital, two passed away because of worsened primary diseases and one passed away due to sudden cardiac death despite emergency rescue efforts.

As of 09:00 on May 22, we screen totally 936,397 close contacts in the city and put the disease control measures in place as far as the infections are concerned.

There were 343 local cases discharged from hospitals upon recovery and 4,549 asymptomatic cases lifted from centralized isolation for medical observation on May 21. They will return to their residences for follow-up health monitoring and the communities should properly arrange for their return.

PCR + antigen testing is being launched in all the three zones of the city these days, i.e., lockdown, control, and precaution zones. Based on the testing result, the three zones were adjusted dynamically on May 21. Now there are 2,051 lockdown zones in the city covering about 0.51 million people, 9,742 control zones with about 1.77 million people, and 59,650 precaution zones with about 21 million people.

In order to cement the COVID-19 containment achievements continuously, the city will enhance the community-level containment in two stages as follows.

Stage one: From now to May 31, the range of lockdown and control zones will be further reduced as newly-added infections are declining on daily basis.

To be specific, the lockdown zones where no positive infections are newly added in seven consecutive days will be revised down to the control zones, and the control zones will become the precaution ones if there are no newly-added positive infections in the follow-up three consecutive days. In case any new positive ones re-emerge, zone adjustment time will be recalculated in such lockdown zones.

The control zones where no positive infections are newly added in seven consecutive days will be revised down to the precaution ones. In case any new positive ones re-emerge, these zones will become the lockdown zones.

No adjustment will be made to the precaution zones in case no positive infections are newly added. However, the medium-risk and high-risk regions will be designated in such precaution zones where new positive COVID-19 cases are reported according to relevant national standards and in light of number and distribution of positive cases as well as risk of COVID-19.

Stage two: The city will follow the rule of designating risk regions. If a region has no lock down and control zones, it can be regarded as a low-risk one, and the precaution zones inside it can be removed.

In principle, residential compound, natural village or company will be defined as the smallest unit in a medium or high-risk region in the stage of COVID-19 containment, which will be extended appropriately to the adjacent risk regions.

If there are 10 or above 10 positive cases reported in a region for the past 14 days or there are two or above two gatherings of people that cause the re-emergence of virus, the region will be defined as a high-risk one.

If there are below 10 positive cases reported in a region for the past 14 days or there are two or only one gathering of people that causes the re-emergence of virus, the region will be defined as a medium-risk one.

If there is no positive case reported in the past 14 days in a medium or high-risk region, the region will be revised down as a low risk one.

In terms of disease management and control in the three zones, the lockdown zones will see to it that the areas inside will be closed, and the people should stay inside and be provided with door-to-door services during the lockdown management. In the control zones, people shall stay put in the residential compounds (companies), and gatherings are prohibited. In the precaution zones, the disease management and control will be enhanced at the community level, and strict limitations on the size of people’s gathering will be imposed.

In a defined medium or high-risk region, 14-day lockdown management will be implemented. People should stay at home, wait for door-to-door service and undergo one PCR testing each day. If the region has no newly-added positive cases in 14 days in a row after the latest case is reported, the region will be revised down as a low-risk one.

Translated from the text of Shanghai Fabu (Original text in Chinese prevails in case of discrepancies)