Shopping malls, supermarkets, restaurants and pharmacies in Shanghai will gradually and orderly resume offline operation as the city is scheduled to promote a staged resumption of commercial business and markets starting Monday, said a vice-mayor.

All such resumption will stick to the principles of "reopening in order, limited shopper flow, effective control and classified management" while also implementing epidemic prevention and control measures strictly, said vice-mayor Chen Tong at a press briefing on Sunday.

All such commercial venues need to design entry and exit channels, limit the flow of shoppers, and provide both services of placing orders online with offline delivery and offline in-store consumption.

Farmers' markets will also resume wholesale business offline while controlling the rate of stalls opened and the number of personnel.

Catering and hairdressing services are also on the resumption list. Catering operators can take orders both online and offline but only provide takeaway service. Hairdressing service operators must also limit the number of customers.

"We believed that as the city's epidemic situation further improves, the resumption of business and markets will take bigger steps and more commercial outlets will be reopened. Residents are expected to have access to better commercial services," said Chen.

He said the commercial outlets in operation in the city have increased to 10,625 so far from the lowest point of fewer than 1,400 during the city's entire lockdown. The number of delivery orders has reached 5 million daily.

Shanghai registered 166 local COVID-19 confirmed cases and 1,203 asymptomatic infections on Saturday. All the infections were found inside quarantine and lockdown populations.

Shanghai reported 166 confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 1,203 local asymptomatic cases on Saturday, the municipal health commission said on Sunday.

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