Five foreign financial institutions, including industry names such as JPMorgan Securities (China) Co Ltd and Invesco Ruihe (Shanghai) Private Equity Investment Management Company Limited, jointly held an opening ceremony on Friday for their new operations in Shanghai.

Shanghai's vice-mayor Wu Qing presided over the opening ceremony, which connected the institutions' global management teams via livestreaming. To begin his congratulatory remarks, Wu suggested attendants take off their face masks and took the lead in doing so.

"Shanghai has reported no new locally transmitted cases of the novel coronavirus disease over the past 20 days. It can be said Shanghai is quite safe now. There are several cases reported every day, but all are imported cases of COVID-19. Of course it is totally fine to keep your masks on," he said.

"We have jointly held the opening ceremony at this very moment to give confidence to everyone, not only to those living in Shanghai, but also to people all over the world," he added.