The Covid-19 outbreak in China’s largest metropolis of Shanghai remains “extremely grim” amid an ongoing lockdown confining around 26 million people to their homes, according to a city official.

Director of Shanghai’s working group on epidemic control, Gu Honghui, was quoted by state media as saying that the outbreak in the city was “still running at a high level”. “The situation is extremely grim,” he said.

China has sent more than 10,000 health workers from around the country to aid the city, including 2,000 from the military, and is mass testing residents, some of whom have been locked down for weeks. Most of eastern Shanghai, which was supposed to reopen last Friday, remained locked down along with the western half of the city.

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