More banks and industries reopen in Shanghai

Eight more banks will resume offline services in Shanghai's Jinshan district to better meet the needs of residents and businesses on cash management and other over-the-counter demands, following the city's first bank reopening in the district on Thursday amid the current COVID-19 wave, according to the district's government official.

Shanghai Rural Business Financial Bank was the city's first bank to resume operations of its department in Zhujing town in the district.

The district was one of the first six regions in Shanghai to have largely achieved zero-COVID beyond areas under closed-loop management as of May 1. This means new daily COVID-19 infection numbers accounted for less than 1 in 100,000 of the total population in the district for three consecutive days.

As of Friday, 645 (74.4%) of the 867 industrial enterprises with an annual revenue of 20 million yuan or more in Jinshan, along with 1,891 offline commercial businesses and 96.7 percent of agricultural enterprises, have resumed operations, according to Zhao Jinguo, vice governor of Jinshan district.

The construction of two municipal-level projects including the e-commerce firm Alibaba Group's Feitian Park project covering 240,000 square meters, restarted in the district. According to Zhai, 16 more construction sites will resume work soon.

Zhai emphasized the significance of tiered management of staff and working environment at firms that already resumed business for COVID-19 prevent and control.

"We have developed guidelines specialized for each industry including factories, supermarkets and banks. Each enterprise is required to formulate their standards as well," he said.

"In addition, an online epidemic prevention and control platform has also been established to digitize employees, risks and nucleic acid testing management," he added.