East China's Shanghai has no plans to impose a citywide lockdown despite the spike in new COVID-19 infections, said Wu Fan, an expert member of Shanghai's COVID-19 response task force, at a press briefing on Saturday.

Shanghai has no plans to impose a citywide lockdown amid surging COVID-19 cases. (Photo: CCTV)

Wu reiterated that the China's financial hub will take all measures to ensure its fight against the recent virus flare-up succeed with the "fastest speed" and "least cost."

"I saw the proposal online saying why can't we make up our minds to lock the city down for three, five days or even a week?" Wu said.

"No, we can't, because Shanghai is a city that not only covers the Shanghai people themselves, but also plays an important role in the national economic and social development, and even has an impact on the global economy.

"If the city came to a complete stop, there would be a lot of international cargo left floating on the East China Sea, which would have an impact on the national and global economy. All Shanghai citizens should have such a big picture view," Wu stressed.

People line up for nucleic acid tests at a hospital in Shanghai, March 26, 2022. (Photo: CFP)

The assessment came as the the city recorded 2,269 new coronavirus cases, including 2,231 asymptomatic carriers on Saturday.

Until the fresh outbreak, Shanghai has long been praised for containing COVID-19 with less life-disrupting yet highly effective measures.

Instead of going into mass lockdown in response to the outbreaks by the highly transmittable Omicron variant, Shanghai divided neighborhoods into grids with selected travel restrictions to avoid bringing the entire city to a halt.

The city also launched a new round of city-wide screening using both nucleic acid and antigen testing on Saturday amid its latest efforts to tame the COVID-19 outbreak.