The Shanghai Municipal Health Commission said on Tuesday that the seven victims were between the ages of 60 and 101 and all had underlying conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
Death of COVID in Shanghai – AFP
Shanghai: China reported seven new COVID-19 deaths in Shanghai on Tuesday, raising the official toll after hundreds of thousands of cases in the metropolis during a week-long lockdown.
City authorities revealed the first virus deaths on Monday, with Tuesday’s fatalities bringing the total official toll to just 10, despite the scale of the outbreak.
Beijing insists its zero COVID policy of tough lockdowns, mass testing and long quarantines has averted deaths and the public health crises that have engulfed much of the rest of the world.
But some have cast doubt on the official figures in a country whose large elderly population has low vaccination rates. Shanghai health officials noted on Sunday that less than two-thirds of residents over the age of 60 had received two COVID injections and less than 40% had received a booster.
Shanghai reports three COVID-19 deaths, first since lockdown began
Unverified social media posts have also reported unreported deaths, usually before being deleted from the internet. Hong Kong, meanwhile, has attributed nearly 9,000 deaths to COVID-19 since the Omicron variant first emerged there in January.
The Shanghai Municipal Health Commission said on Tuesday that the seven victims were between the ages of 60 and 101 and all had underlying conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
The patients “became seriously ill after admission to hospital and died after ineffective rescue efforts, with the direct cause of death being underlying illnesses”, the commission said.
It also reported more than 20,000 new COVID cases, the vast majority asymptomatic.
Many of Shanghai’s 25 million people have been confined to their homes since March as the number of daily cases topped 25,000 – a modest figure by global standards but virtually unheard of in China.
Many locals have flooded social media with complaints about food shortages, spartan quarantine conditions and heavy-handed enforcement, circulating footage of rare protests faster than government censors can suppress them.
The country’s zero-tolerance approach to COVID had largely slowed new cases after the virus first emerged in China’s central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
But authorities have scrambled in recent weeks to contain cases spanning multiple regions, largely due to the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
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