Shanghai reports its first official Covid deaths linked to the Omicron outbreak engulfing the city

Among the first recorded deaths are three people aged between 89 and 91 who were reportedly unvaccinated.

The outbreak arose despite China’s ‘zero-Covid’ strategy that has confined residents in strict lock-downs with mass testing across the country.

China’s health commission says Shanghai reported around 2400 symptomatic cases and more than 19,000 asymptomatic infections on April 18, 2022.

However, there has been suspicion with many questioning the low death toll despite the high case numbers in a country with the largest population.

Since March 1, more than 370,000 people in Shanghai have been infected with the virus but officials say no one had died until Sunday.

Shanghai’s low death toll is partly due to how Covid deaths are counted. Mainland China’s Covid-19 cases and deaths are counted separately from Hong Kong, another administrative region under China.

Hong Kong faces a much larger outbreak with almost 9000 deaths and 1.1 million cases since omicron surged in January 2022.

Rijul Baath contributed to this report