Do Not Ignore People's Needs In Covid Fight: Expert

A mainland infectious disease expert on Thursday said allowing people to live a normal life during the Covid-19 pandemic is just as important a task as achieving the “dynamic zero” target.

Writing on his Weibo social media account, Zhang Wenhong warned that the fight against the pandemic will be lengthy, and, among other things, that it’s important to make sure people are able to seek medical attention for non-Covid needs, as well as to ensure small and independent businesses can continue to operate.

Zhang said authorities have learned in tackling the outbreak in Shanghai that they cannot just “do whatever it takes to kill the virus”, but must tend to people’s needs during a lockdown.

Shanghai has been grappling with its worst Covid outbreak since the pandemic began more than two years ago, but the expert believed the city’s situation appears to be improving after the percentage of newly identified cases through mass testing dropped to around 10 percent.

Still, the nation’s most populous city reported four more symptomatic cases and 979 asymptomatic infections, a slight increase from a day earlier.

In total, the National Health Commission reported 2,010 symptomatic local cases – down from 2,591 the day before – with 90 percent of them found in the northeastern province of Jilin.

The number of new asymptomatic cases, which the nation does not classify as confirmed infections, increased to 2,722 from 2,346.

Meanwhile, Guangdong province saw a further drop in new symptomatic cases, from 15 the day before to only eight.

Five of them were found in Shenzhen.