COVID resurface mauling in China

Empty roads during a phased lockdown due to Covid-19 in Shanghai, China, on Tuesday. (Bloomberg)

Chinese authorities extended a lockdown in Shanghai to cover all of the financial Centre's 26 million people on Tuesday after city-wide testing saw new COVID-19 cases surge to more than 13,000 amid growing public anger over quarantine rules.

Shanghai is now the largest city to be locked down to date since early 2020.

The whole of Shanghai with nearly 25 million residents will likely be kept under indefinite restrictions with authorities doing away with separate measures for the eastern and western sides of the city as was initially planned.

Over 38,000 medics from 15 Chinese provinces and cities were in Shanghai to help contain the ongoing outbreak led by the fast-spreading Omicron variant of Covid.

Residential communities have begun distributing packets of Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCM) to control symptoms of fever.