COVID-19 Cases Continue To Soar, China Sends Troops And Medical Personnel To Help Deal With COVID-19 In Shanghai

Illustration of a mass COVID-19 test site in China. (Wikimedia Commons/David290)

JAKARTA - China has sent the military and thousands of health workers to Shanghai, to help carry out COVID-19 tests on the city's 26 million residents, as cases of COVID-19 infection continue to rise.

Some residents got up before dawn to immediately see health workers and get tested for COVID-19 by nucleic acid testing in their housing complex, with many residents still wearing pajamas queuing within two meters.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) on Sunday sent more than 2.000 medical personnel from across the army, navy and joint logistical support forces to Shanghai, an armed forces newspaper reported.

Meanwhile, more than 10.000 health workers from provinces such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Beijing have arrived in Shanghai, according to state media reports, which show they arrived, carrying suitcases and masks, using high-speed trains and planes.

This is China's biggest public health response since dealing with the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, where the new coronavirus was first discovered in late 2019. The State Council said the PLA sent more than 4,000 medical personnel to Hubei Province, where Wuhan was, at the time.

Shanghai, which began a two-stage lockdown on March 28 that has been extended to limit nearly all residents to their homes, reported 8,581 asymptomatic COVID-19 cases and 425 symptomatic COVID cases for April 3.

Although the outbreak is small by global standards, the city has emerged as a test of China's elimination strategy based on testing, tracing, and quarantining all positive cases and their close contacts.

The COVID-19 test in China's most populous city took place in the evening when Shanghai initially said it planned to lift the city's lockdown.

The Bamboo Curtain country is known to have 12,400 institutions capable of processing tests from as many as 900 million people per day, a senior Chinese health official reportedly said last month. China primarily uses pool testing, a process in which up to 20 swab samples are mixed together for faster processing.

The city has also turned several hospitals, gyms, apartment blocks, and other places into central quarantine sites, including the Shanghai New International Expo Center, which can accommodate 15.000 patients at full capacity.

The surge in state support for Shanghai comes as the city strains under the demands of the country's "dynamic cleaning" strategy, with residents complaining of overcrowded and unsanitary quarantine centers and difficulties in securing food and essential medical aid.

Some began to question the policy, asking why children who tested positive for COVID were separated from their parents, and why mild or asymptomatic infections, mostly Shanghai cases, could not be isolated at home.

On Monday, Shanghai official Wu Qianyu said at a press conference, that children could be accompanied by their parents if the parents were also infected, but separated if not, adding that policies were still being refined.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged the country to curb the momentum of the outbreak as soon as possible, while sticking to a policy of "dynamic clean-up".

Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chunlan, who was sent to Shanghai by the central government, urged the city to "make decisive and swift steps" to curb the pandemic on Saturday.