Hundreds of Medics Rush to Assist Shanghai's COVID-19 Fight

All medical workers have experience fighting on the front line during the COVID-19 outbreak in Hubei province in 2020, the commission said.

Once held up as a model of a targeted, fine-tuned pandemic response, Shanghai is facing its sternest test yet, with citywide mass testing for its 25 million residents under way. It has reported more than 60,000 infections, mostly asymptomatic, since early last month, the China Daily reported.

The city government is using all of its human power, including civil servants, state-owned company employees and Communist Party members to facilitate the rapid testing – not to mention the army, whose transport planes have delivered personnel along with testing and safety equipment.

Wu Qianyu, a senior Shanghai health commission official, said on Sunday that medical teams had been sent from around the country to help. According to state media, they came from as far away as Beijing and Tianjin, in the north, and Hainan, in the south.

Some of the estimated 10,000 extra personnel – medical and testing staff, and soldiers – were to be stationed in makeshift hospitals to treat patients, while others would help with mass testing and disinfection.

Tens of thousands of beds have been prepared to accommodate infected residents and their close contacts, at public hospitals, temporary hospitals built recently to treat mild and asymptomatic infections, and quarantine sites in neighboring cities such as Hangzhou, sources told the South China Morning Post.

Several Y-20 military transport planes and more than 2,000 soldiers landed in Shanghai on Sunday evening, along with equipment from more than 10 provincial governments, state news agency Xinhua said.