China reported 13,000 COVID-19 cases on Sunday, the most since the peak of the first pandemic wave over two years ago, with Shanghai now the epicentre of the country’s worst outbreak.
The highly transmissible Omicron variant has spread to more than a dozen provinces, rattling China’s “zero-Covid” strategy which had until March successfully kept the daily caseload down to double or triple digits.
But the current outbreak is also testing the patience of the Chinese towards tough restrictions, as Beijing imposes targeted lockdowns, mass tests and travel curbs at a time when much of the world has re-opened.
Tens of millions of Chinese residents have once more endured some form of lockdown over the last month, disrupting work and damaging the economy.
The country recorded 13,146 cases on Sunday, the National Health Commission said in a statement, with “no new deaths” reported.
It is China’s highest infection toll since the middle of February 2020.
The streets of Shanghai were quiet Sunday as a citywide lockdown dragged on, with nearly 70 per cent of the national infection caseload discovered from mass testing of its 25 million residents.
But city authorities have conceded they are struggling to contain the outbreak, with thousands now in state quarantine and the capacity of health workers stretched.