Shanghai’s government on Wednesday urged local authorities to use a heavier hand when enforcing the city’s anti-Chinese coronavirus measures, calling for the implementation of a “firmer attitude” and “swifter actions” to combat Shanghai’s latest epidemic of the disease, the state-run Global Times reported.

“Top authorities in Shanghai called for a ‘firmer’ attitude, ‘more thorough’ measures and ‘swifter’ actions in the battle against the faster and highly transmissible variant at a meeting held on Wednesday morning [April 5],” according to the publication.

An aerial view of a residential area is seen during the second stage of a pandemic lockdown in Jing’ an district in Shanghai on April 5, 2022. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)

“Shanghai [Communist] Party chief Li Qiang vowed to speed up the process of collecting, sending, checking, reporting and verifying samples. ‘We must act as fast as we can to catch up with the positive cases and locate the infected people,’ he said,” as quoted by the Global Times.

A delivery man passes by barriers set up to lock down a community in Shanghai, China, on March 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Chen Si)

The newspaper further revealed Shanghai’s government “has been gearing up to build makeshift hospitals and collective quarantine centers while vowing to take stronger measures to make sure sufficient daily supplies are available to the metropolis’ residents.”

The Global Times is published by the People’s Daily, which is the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee.

A worker wearing protective gear (L) receives an item from a delivery worker at the entrance of a compound during the second stage of a pandemic lockdown in Jing’ an district in Shanghai on April 5, 2022. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)

Shanghai’s latest outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus is one of several epidemics of the disease throughout China currently. China’s National Health Commission recorded nearly 23,000 cases of the Chinese coronavirus nationwide on April 5 as part of the country’s latest resurgence of the disease. China has a population of over 1.4 billion.

More than 10,000 of Shanghai’s 26 million residents have tested positive for the Chinese coronavirus since the city began reporting its latest outbreak of the disease in early March. Most of these cases are asymptomatic, however, as “only 268 symptomatic daily COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] cases” were recorded in Shanghai as of April 5, according to a report by Reuters.

The Chinese Communist Party has insisted on enforcing strict lockdown and quarantine measures on the whole of Shanghai since April 5 despite the city’s health statistics indicating a low level of symptomatic infections of the Chinese coronavirus. Radio Free Asia described Shanghai’s quarantine facilities as “overflowing” on April 6. The development seemed paradoxical, as asymptomatic patients must constitute the vast majority of the “thousands” of people allegedly detained in Shanghai’s isolation camps based on the city’s latest Chinese coronavirus figures. The Chinese Communist Party has failed to explain why it has treated Shanghai’s allegedly largely asymptomatic outbreak of the disease with such extreme measures, which have included separating children from parents during forced quarantines.