On Tuesday, an official in Shanghai said the prospect of the explosion of China’s largest city, Kovit-19, was still “very dark”, forcing about 26 million people out of their homes amid continuing closures.

Zhou Hongwei, director of Shanghai’s epidemiological task force, was quoted by state media as saying that the virus outbreak in the city was “high. The situation is very bad.”

China has sent more than 10,000 health workers from across the country to help the city, including 2,000 soldiers, and has been conducting mass checks on residents, some of whom have been locked up for weeks.

Most parts of eastern Shanghai, which was scheduled to reopen last Friday, have been closed along with the western part of the city.

Shanghai recorded a further 13,354 cases on Monday, most of them asymptomatic, bringing the total number of epidemics in the city to more than 73,000 since the last wave of epidemics began last month.

No deaths have been reported in the current wave caused by the Omigron PA2 variant, which is more infectious and less dangerous than the previous delta strain.

The virus continues to spread individually in northeastern China’s Jilin province, and the capital, Beijing, has nine additional cases, only one of which is asymptomatic, while workers have closed the entire business center in the infected city.