Medical workers prepare to give residents in Shanghai nucleic acid tests. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

The Guixi residential community in downtown Shanghai has been designated as a medium-risk area for COVID-19 after a resident was confirmed to have been infected, according to Shanghai authorities on Sunday. This brought the number of medium-risk areas up to four in the metropolis.

Shanghai has so far confirmed 12 local patients since Thursday during regular check-ups, which have all been transferred to the designated Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center for treatment, Wu Jinglei, director of the Shanghai Health Commission, said on Sunday during a press conference.

Of the 12 patients, 10 are normal cases and two are mild cases. Three of them are over 70 years old, and two are 84 years old. Generally, the patients are all in the early stages of infection, with symptoms including fever, cough and expectoration, Wu said.

Shanghai had inspected 33,000 boxes of imported cold-chain products and tested over 210,000 samples as of Saturday, after the city launched a strict guideline to prevent virus spread in the industry since November 16, 2020, Shanghai's market watchdog said. 

Among them, outer packaging samples of seven batches of goods tested positive for coronavirus, and fortunately they haven't entered the market, Xu Jin, deputy director of the Shanghai Administration for Market Regulation, said at the Sunday news conference.

Imported goods without the required information, including inspection and quarantine certificates, nucleic acid test reports, disinfection reports and other information that allows the tracing of imported products, will not be sold on the market.

Also, closed-loop operations at two top-tier hospitals - Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center and Renji Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine - are generally normal after new COVID-19 cases were found there. Two rounds of nucleic acid tests have been conducted, with the results all coming back negative, Shanghai authorities announced on Sunday.