Residents in the major Chinese financial centre of Shanghai, where 26 million people are in lockdown, have been scrambling to secure food, with supermarkets shut and deliveries restricted.
With many compounds already locked down for more than two weeks, residents have grown frustrated with restrictions, testing requirements and poor availability of food and other necessities.
The government of the city, which is in the grip of its largest-ever COVID-19 outbreak, said on Wednesday it would not consider lifting restrictions until the latest tests were completed and the results evaluated.
Most of eastern Shanghai, which was supposed to reopen last Friday, remains locked down, along with the western half of the city.
Wu Qianyu, an official with the city's health commission, told a briefing that Shanghai was in a "race against time" to contain the outbreak.
Record number of cases
Shanghai detected a record 16,766 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases on April 5, up from 13,086 a day earlier. Symptomatic cases also rose to 311 from 268 the day before.
On Monday, the city's total number of cases since the latest wave of infections began last month stood at more than 73,000.
No deaths have been recorded from the Omicron outbreak.
The director of Shanghai's working group on epidemic control, Gu Honghui, was quoted by state media as saying that the outbreak in the city was "still running at a high level".
"The situation is extremely grim," Mr Gu said.
China has sent more than 10,000 health workers from around the country to aid the city, including 2,000 from the military.
A separate outbreak continues to rage in the north-eastern province of Jilin and the capital Beijing also had an additional nine cases.
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) issued a statement urging Australians in Shanghai to follow all directions.
"We will continue to engage with local authorities on COVID-19 response measures, including the implementation of COVID-19 policies in relation to the treatment of families," a DFAT spokesperson said.
Mounting frustration
Many people have called for asymptomatic cases to be allowed to quarantine at home. And policies that separate COVID-positive children from their parents have drawn fire.
Liu Min, vice-head of Shanghai's commerce commission, told reporters that authorities were working hard to resolve bottlenecks and take care of the population's "basic living needs".
She said efforts would be made to ship food and other necessities to Shanghai from other provinces, and authorities would also build emergency supply stations in and around the city to ensure vegetable supplies.
But she said the biggest challenge was getting deliveries to homes.
With official delivery channels either unavailable or severely backlogged, residents have been using whatever method they can — including community WeChat groups — to try to obtain fresh fruit and vegetables.
Liu said Shanghai would work to "release delivery capacity", saying the 11,000 riders working for major e-commerce platforms in the city could go to work if they submitted daily negative COVID tests.
Logistics have been a major challenge for the city government, which had been relatively unscathed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The government is also expanding its quarantine capacity, converting the 150,000-square-metre National Convention and Exhibition Centre into a quarantine facility that can hold 40,000 people.
Besides difficulties obtaining food and daily necessities, complaints have also arisen over shortages of medical workers, volunteers, and beds in isolation wards where tens of thousands are being kept for observation.
Shanghai has converted an exhibition hall and other facilities into massive isolation centres where people with mild or no symptoms are housed in a sea of beds separated by temporary partitions.
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.
Circulation of footage showing multiple infants kept in cots prompted the city's Public Health Clinical Centre to issue a statement saying the children were being well looked after and had been in the process of being moved to a new facility when the footage was taken.
At a virtual town hall on Monday, the US consulate in Shanghai warned of possible family separations amid the lockdown but said it had an "extremely limited ability" to intervene in such cases.
Economic pressures
Analysts say the impact of the current restrictions on the economy is growing, especially for small businesses, with nearly 200 million people across China under some sort of lockdown, according to estimates by Nomura.
Activity in China's services sector shrunk at the steepest pace in two years in March as the local surge in coronavirus cases restricted mobility and weighed on client demand, a private sector survey showed on Wednesday.
The tourism sector is also under pressure. The number of journeys taken over China's three-day Tomb Sweeping Festival holiday tumbled by nearly two-thirds from last year, state media said, and was also lower than 2020, when the country was still recovering from the first outbreak in Wuhan.
Concern is growing about the potential economic impact on China's financial capital, also a major shipping and manufacturing centre.
Most public transport has been suspended and non-essential businesses closed, although airports and train stations remain open and the city's port and some major industries such as car plants continue to operate.
International events in the city have been cancelled and three out of five foreign companies with operations in Shanghai say they have cut this year's sales forecasts, according to a survey conducted last week by the American Chamber of Commerce.
One-third of the 120 companies that responded to the survey said they have delayed investments.
Despite those concerns and growing public frustration, China says it is sticking to its hardline "zero-tolerance" approach mandating lockdowns, mass testing and the compulsory isolation of all suspected cases and close contacts.
ABC/Wires
