Seven more Covid deaths have been reported in the Chinese city of Shanghai amid a strict lockdown.
It comes after more than 320,000 cases were confirmed in recent weeks.
The outbreak is being driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant and has resulted in the 25 million residents being confined to their homes since late-March.
The lockdown is now due to enter a fourth week as another round of mass-testing gets underway. Anyone who tests positive is sent to quarantine centres.
Shanghai is among at least 44 Chinese cities currency under some form of lockdown.
The seven deaths on Tuesday bring the city’s overall Covid death toll to 10.
Health officials told the media that those who died were aged between 60 and 101, had underlying health conditions and were unvaccinated.
Meanwhile, health experts say a new Covid variant is circulating in Ireland despite only one confirmed case.
The mutation, known as Omicron XE, is believed to be more contagious than previous versions of Omicron.
It is beginning to appear more frequently in Britain, with 1,200 cases confirmed to date and five of these in the north of Ireland as of Monday afternoon.
Professor of Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, Kingston Mills, told RTE's Morning Ireland: “XE is what's called a recombinant virus between BA.1 and BA.2, so we had Omicron and that “was a new variant that emerged in December.
"Then there was a sub-variant of that called BA.2 which is now known as the dominant variant in Ireland and a lot of European countries.
"When a person gets infected with two different viruses, those viruses can recombine to give a kind of hybrid virus, which is a mixture of the genome of one and the other.
"So what you have with Omicron XE is that bits of the BA.1 virus and a bit of the BA.2 to make up the XE, and the spike protein is from the BA.2 version and some of the internal proteins are from BA.1.
"There is a suggestion from data in the UK, in the UK they've had over 1,000 cases of this XE variant, and there's a suggestion that it may be more transmissible than BA.2 by about 10 or 20%."
READ MORE: Irish pubs: Latest on nightclub opening hour changes as timeline given for major nightlife boost
READ MORE: Top European hotspot drops Covid testing rule for some Irish passengers ahead of peak summer season
Get breaking news to your inbox by signing up to our newsletter .
