SHANGHAI (Reuters – Shanghai has established a goal to prevent the spread COVID-19 from outside quarantined areas, two people who are familiar with it said. It would allow China’s largest city, Shanghai, to relax lockdown restrictions and return to normal living.

According to a Saturday speech made by a member of the local Communist Party, officials will need to speed up COVID testing, and transfer positive cases to quarantine centers. A copy was also seen by Reuters.

Shanghai has been the center of China’s biggest outbreak since it was discovered in Wuhan, late 2019. The city has seen more than 320,000 cases since its peak in March.

People locked-up in Shanghai expressed dismay at difficulties with food sourcing, income loss, and conditions at central quarantine centre. Many parts of China are suffering from shuttered factories and transportation bottlenecks, which is a result of COVID-19 curbs. These disruptions can be seen in global supply chains.

Sources claim that Shanghai’s “zero-COVID” goal at the community level was recently communicated to its Communist Party cadres by recent days. The information is not publicly available.

China defines zero-COVID status as a community. This means no new cases can be found outside the quarantined zones.

The party secretary for the Baoshan city district gave a speech Saturday that described the order as a necessity as the city was facing growing anxiety, food shortages and a critical moment.

Chen Jie stated in his speech that “The State Council Working Group and the municipal party committee as well as the municipal government requested that the epidemic’s turning point should occur on 17th, and that zero COVID status be achieved on 20th”.

Requests for comment were not received by the Shanghai government or China’s State Council immediately. Outside of normal working hours, the Baoshan District Government could not be reached.

THE TURNING POINT

This is a military order. There is no room to bargain. We can only fight for victory by gritting our teeth. “This is also a complete attack and a desperate battle to end the trend of the epidemic,” the speech stated.

Other Chinese cities have made a significant change by implementing lockdowns to stop transmission at the community level.

After the drop in cases from outside of quarantined areas, authorities in Shenzhen in southern China, who were kept in lockdown for seven days in March, declared that they had been granted this status. Shenzhen quickly reopened the public transport system and allowed business to resume their work.

Shanghai had reported 23,643 local infections on Saturday. However, 722 cases of new infection were not from quarantined areas.

China’s COVID “dynamic clearing” strategy requires the authorities to quarantine all COVID cases centrally and to isolate close relatives.

After the financial hub failed to isolate COVID-19, Beijing officials intervened in Shanghai early April. They locked the city in stages. Xi Jinping, the Chinese president has stressed that China should not loosen coronavirus controls and must adhere to an elimination strategy.

Shanghai first began to lock down easterly areas of the Huangpu river in March 28 and then extended it citywide in April 1. It did ease some movement restrictions for some residents, but most businesses are still closed and all public transportation is suspended.

China’s sector regulator announced Friday it had identified 666 Shanghai-based companies from the automotive, semiconductor, and medical industries as priority firms which must resume work.