BEIJING: 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, a city official said on Tuesday.

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,” Gu 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.

Officials would reevaluate preventative measures after the results of tests on all city residents are analyzed, Gu said.

Before that, citizens are asked to continue following the current lockdown measures and stay in their homes except for medical and other emergency situations, Gu said.

Shanghai has reported more than 73,000 positive Covid-19 infections since the resurgence of the highly contagious Omicron variant in March.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2022