Shanghai records over 13,000 new infections

Shanghai reported 13,354 new COVID-19 infections on Monday after the city conducted a citywide mass testing, the municipal government said on Tuesday.

Gu Honghui, deputy secretary-general of Shanghai municipal government, told a news conference that as of 8 am Tuesday a total of 25.66 million people in Shanghai were tested in this latest drive that started on Monday.

Because of the large population, medical professionals used mix testing method, and 1.9 million out of the 2.4 million testing tubes were already analyzed.

"We have strengthened the process between testing, transport, analyzing, report and verification so as to shorten the overall time," said Gu, adding that with the assistance from the central government and other provinces, the city can now process 4 million tubes of samples in 24 hours.

After verifying all the test results, the city will place transport and quarantine of the infected as its top priority. A total of 47,700 quarantine beds have been put into use, and another 30,000 will be ready soon, said Gu.

"We are carrying out a comprehensive analysis of the current outbreak based on the test results, and will announce follow-up measures as soon as possible," Gu said. "We urge residents to cooperate with the current epidemic control and stay at home except for special reasons such as hospital visits.

Gu said the current lockdown measures will remain in place for the time being before the analysis of test result finishes.