Shanghai strengthens management on nursing homes amid COVID-19

SHANGHAI, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai has strengthened management over care homes for the elderly across the city amid the latest resurgence of COVID-19 infections, a local official said on Friday.

The nursing facilities in Shanghai banned people from visiting from March 1, and they began to adopt closed-off management on March 10, said Peng Chenlei, deputy mayor of Shanghai told a press conference.

Starting on April 2, Shanghai launched stricter control over the flow of supplies for the nursing homes. All packages and items must be disinfected before they can be taken to the facilities, said Peng.

The city's nursing homes carried out nucleic acid testing for their staff and elderly clients on a regular basis, and launched disinfection in key areas, Peng added.

Over the past 40-plus days, the staff helped the elderly contact their family members through video chats to ease their worries.

Shanghai reported 3,200 confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 19,872 local asymptomatic carriers on Thursday, the municipal health commission said Friday.