BEIJING — Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan urged regions experiencing severe epidemic outbreaks to clear COVID-19 cases among the general public in the shortest time possible.

Sun, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks on March 12 at a national teleconference of the State Council joint prevention and control mechanism against COVID-19.

She called for resolute measures to put outbreaks under control as soon as possible.

Efforts should be made to expand the coverage of nucleic acid testing, accelerate epidemiological screening and patient transportation and isolation, and apply quarantine measures in a strict way, said Sun.

Top priority should be given to preventing imported cases, with ports of entry as key areas and areas subject to closed-loop management as the key link, she added.

Sun also asked schools to strengthen daily health monitoring, ramp up the proportion of random nucleic acid testing and guard against clusters of infection.

The Chinese mainland on March 11 reported 476 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the National Health Commission said on March 12.