Shanghai has reported more than 73,000 positive COVID19 infections since March. 9News
largest metropolis of Shanghai remains "extremely grim" amid an ongoing lockdown confining around 26 million people to their homes, a city official said Tuesday.
Most of eastern Shanghai, which was supposed to reopen last Friday, remained locked down along with the western half of the city. Shanghai has reported more than 73,000 positive COVID-19 infections since the resurgence of the highly contagious Omicron variant in March. While China's vaccination rate hovers around 90 per cent, its domestically produced inactivated virus vaccines are seen as weaker than the mRNA vaccines such as those produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna that are used abroad, as well as in the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macao. Vaccination rates among the elderly are also much lower than the population at large, with only around half of those over 80 fully vaccinated.
Public outrage has been fuelled by reports and video clips posted on the internet documenting the death of a nurse who was denied admittance to her own hospital under COVID-19 restrictions, and infant children separated from their parents.