Shanghai to Shenzhen, Chinese cities rush to contain Covid-19 wave as new cases cross 1,000 for second day

China’s first-tier cities, from Shanghai in the east to Shenzhen in the south, are racing to tamp down the country’s latest Covid-19 wave, with more than 1,500 new cases reported nationwide on Saturday.

With the surge in case posing new challenges for the health system, the country’s drug regulator has approved five companies to produce rapid antigen test kits, as part of Premier Li Keqiang’s more “scientific and precise” pandemic control promise.

This came as more than a dozen provinces reported confirmed cases, including Shandong in the east, Guangdong in the south and Jilin – a northeastern province bordering North Korea and Russia – which reported 400 infections, two-thirds of them asymptomatic.

Health authorities have put the spike in asymptomatic cases down to the Omicron variant, seen to be more transmissible but less severe than the original Covid-19 virus, as well as greater immunity from mass vaccination.