SHANGHAI, April 19, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - China reported seven more deaths from
Covid-19 in Shanghai on Tuesday, after hundreds of thousands of cases in the
metropolis during a weeks-long lockdown.

City authorities revealed the first deaths of this outbreak on Monday, with
Tuesday's fatalities bringing the official toll to just 10, even as the virus
continues to spread.

Beijing insists its zero-Covid policy of hard lockdowns, mass testing and
lengthy quarantines has averted fatalities and the public health crises that
have engulfed much of the rest of the world.

But some have cast doubt on official figures in a nation where the vast
elderly population has a low vaccination rate.

By comparison, Hong Kong -- which also has a high number of unvaccinated
elderly -- has tallied nearly 9,000 deaths among 1.18 million Covid-19 cases
since the Omicron variant surged there in January.

Unverified social media posts have claimed Shanghai's deaths are going
unreported, but the messages have been quickly scrubbed from the internet.

Shanghai health officials said Sunday that less than two-thirds of residents
over 60 had received two Covid jabs and under 40 percent had received a
booster.

The seven newly reported deaths were all unvaccinated patients, city health
official Wu Qianyu told a press conference on Tuesday.

They were aged between 60 and 101, and suffered from underlying conditions
such as heart disease and diabetes, according to the Shanghai Municipal
Health Commission.

The patients "became severely ill after admission to hospital, and died after
ineffective rescue efforts, with the direct cause of death being underlying
diseases", the commission said.

Shanghai logged more than 20,000 new and mostly asymptomatic Covid cases
Tuesday, defying officials' efforts to stamp out the infection.

Many of the city's 25 million residents have been confined to their homes
since March, with some flooding social media with complaints of food
shortages, spartan quarantine conditions and heavy-handed enforcement.

Protest footage has circulated faster than government censors can delete it.

The country's zero-tolerance approach to Covid had largely slowed new cases
to a trickle after the virus first emerged in the central Chinese city of
Wuhan in late 2019.

But officials have scrambled in recent weeks to contain an outbreak spanning
multiple regions, largely driven by the fast-spreading Omicron variant.

By one estimate on Monday, around 350 million people in at least 44 cities
are currently under some form of lockdown in China.