At a COVID-19 press conference held on the afternoon of March 15, Gu Honghui, Deputy Secretary-General of the Shanghai Municipal Government and Director of the Office of the Municipal COVID-19 Prevention and Control Task Force, stated that Shanghai was not under a “lockdown” and that there was “no need” for a lockdown. He announced that several key areas would be designated based on the current situation and that grid-based nucleic acid screening would be carried out to strengthen community-level epidemic control. However, shortly afterward, Shanghai effectively entered a state of forceful and extensive lockdown.