Shanghai Reports 2 New Local COVID-19 Cases on Wednesday

By Ned Kelly, August 25, 2021

Shanghai recorded two new local COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, according to a daily report by China’s National Health Commission on Wednesday, taking the total in the city up to eight in the last week.

The first case was reported in Pudong, and is a worker of the foreign cargo flights section at Pudong International Airport, taking the current airport outbreak total to six cases. The new case is a close contact of a previous case and was confirmed while under quarantine.

The second Shanghai case was reported in Songjiang, and is a close contact of that district's previous case, a medical worker at Songjiang District Central Hospital. The new case was also confirmed while under quarantine.

Places visited by both new cases have been disinfected, while 61 close contacts of the pair had been put under quarantine by Wednesday morning.

Both the Pudong International Airport outbreak and the Songjiang cases have been traced to overseas sources; none of the cases had left Shanghai in the 14 days prior to being confirmed with infection, they had no contact history with people from high- or medium-risk regions from other cities and had no contact with the cold chain before they became ill.

In the initial Songjiang case, the virus was found to be highly similar to a recent imported case, with the imported patient having been sent to the fever clinic at Songjiang District Central Hospital, where the medical worker worked.

In the cases of the Pudong International Airport workers, authorities have concluded they were infected by the hyper-contagious Delta variant after being exposed to people or environments bearing the overseas virus due to their haphazard pandemic prevention measures.

There are currently five medium-risk areas in Shanghai; four in Pudong, and one in Songjiang District.

In response to the Shanghai outbreak, travelers departing from Pudong International Airport now have to provide nucleic acid test reports before boarding their aircraft, or receive on-site testing after landing at multiple domestic cities.

Passengers departing from Shanghai's Hongqiao International Airport do not need to take the test.

The Chinese mainland reported a total of four new local COVID-19 cases on Wednesday. Along with the two cases in Shanghai, there was one case reported in Yunnan and one in Jiangsu, where the current outbreak started with cases of the hyper-contagious Delta variant detected in provincial capital Nanjing.

The commission also reported 16 new imported cases, including six in Yunnan, four in Shanghai, three in Guangdong, and one each in Tianjin, Jiangsu and Henan.

No deaths related to COVID-19 were reported, the commission added.

All 31 provincial-level regions in the Chinese mainland have urged citizens not to leave the provinces where they live unless it is necessary, and to avoid medium and high-risk areas for COVID-19, with enhanced prevention and control measures, including quarantine, for those that have.

China has identified four high-risk and 54 medium-risk areas at the time of publication. Scan the QR to find out where they are, and see the latest numbers: