Shanghai's daily COVID caseload at nearly 1000, but containment in sight

New daily COVID-19 cases in the Chinese commercial hub of Shanghai remained close to 1,000 on Thursday as authorities scrambled to identify and isolate asymptomatic infections, though a leading expert said the outbreak was being contained. Though the number of cases in Shanghai remains small by global standards, the densely populated city has become a testing ground for China's 'zero-COVID' strategy as it tries to bring the highly infectious Omicron variant under control. In a meeting on Wednesday, Shanghai's Communist Party leaders emphasised the need to continue testing, implementing 'closed loops' and cutting off transmission chains in order to bring new infections to zero as soon as possible.