Restaurants in Shanghai to resume dine-in services

Restaurants in Shanghai will resume dine-in services starting Wednesday as the epidemic situation in the city has been basically brought under control, an official with the Shanghai Commerce Commission said at a press briefing on Sunday.

The policy change is limited to subdistricts without medium-risk areas for the virus' spread and without new infections in communities within the past week, said Lai Xiaoyi, an inspector with the commission.

"Restaurants must limit the number of diners at a time and keep tables apart from each other," Lai said.

In addition to thorough preventive disinfection before restoring business, the restaurants must clean and disinfect tables, chairs, and tableware after each table is cleared, she said.

"Serving spoons and chopsticks must be provided at each table, and the duration of dining for each table of guests shall be controlled at about 1.5 hours," she said.

Diners must hold negative nucleic acid test results from within 72 hours to enter restaurants and their temperature must be no higher than 37.3 degrees. They must also scan the venue QR codes.

Shanghai registered two locally transmitted COVID-19 asymptomatic infections out of quarantine and locked down populations on Sunday.

Zhao Dandan, deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission, said there are currently 13 medium-risk areas in Shanghai involving nine districts, including downtown ones such as Xuhui and Jing'an.

"Scattered local infections emerged again today after Shanghai reported zero local COVID-19 infections for five consecutive days," Zhao said.

"The command systems at city and district level have always maintained an emergency response state. When an infection is found, they'll respond immediately and try to stop the spread of the epidemic in a timely manner," he said.