Health officials reported 438 confirmed cases in the past 24 hours on Sunday, along with 7,788 asymptomatic.  Both figures were slightly higher than the previous day, while the northeastern province of Jilin recorded a total of 4,455 cases on Sunday, also marking an increase from Saturday.
Although small by the standards of some countries, the daily increases are some of the largest since the virus was first detected in central Wuhan in late 2019.
Shanghai, with a population of 26 million, launched a two-stage lockdown last week, with residents of eastern Pudong being forced to flee their homes on Friday as neighbors in western Puxi spent their four-day period isolation.
Despite this reassurance, millions in Pudong are still confined to their homes amid complaints about food deliveries and the availability of medicines and health services.
Alerts issued to residents said they had to take daily self-tests for COVID-19 and take precautions, including wearing a mask at home and avoiding contact with family members – measures that have not been widely enforced since the early days of the pandemic.
While Wuhan endured a 76-day lockdown in 2020 with relatively few complaints, Shanghai residents – many of whom were in isolation even before last week’s lockdown began – seem increasingly bored with the measures and methods used to enforce them.
Although coverage in China’s state-controlled media remains overwhelmingly positive, complaints have surfaced on the Internet, including in the form of videos and recordings that allegedly show harsh practices by officials and volunteers, claiming that good medical advice was ignored. in favor of political expediency.
“While there has been little social resistance to the lockdown since it was imposed on Wuhan, resistance in Shanghai is now being felt,” Daly Young, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
As the vast majority of cases in Shanghai are not life-threatening, “it is not surprising that the imposition of lockdown and forced quarantine of those infected in harsh conditions is met with resistance,” Yang wrote on Twitter.
A city official last week apologized in response to complaints about the government handling the lockdown, and a vice president made sweeping demands for improvements during a tour of Shanghai on Saturday.
Sun Chunlan, a member of the ruling Communist Party’s Politburo, called for “decisive and swift action to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Shanghai as soon as possible,” the official Xinhua news agency reported.
However, the Sun stressed the “unwavering adherence” to China’s tough “zero-COVID” approach, imposing a lockdown, forced isolation of all suspicious cases and mass trials, even if it recognizes its social and economic tax.
“It’s a daunting task and a huge challenge to combat the Omicron variant while maintaining the normal operation of key functions in a large city,” Sun said.
He called for the preservation of key industries and institutions and the operation of supply and industrial chains in the commercial hub, while ensuring “the basic living conditions of people and normal medical needs”.
State media reports say Communist Party leader and leader Xi Jinping is directing the tough approach, while seeking to avoid further damage to the dangerous economy and ensure overall stability in the run-up to the congress.
Despite the sharp rise in infections, China has not recorded any new COVID-19 deaths since March 20, when two were added for a total of 4,638.  The vaccination rate in China is over 87 percent – although significantly lower among the elderly – and Omicron is known to be more contagious while the disease it causes is usually milder than with the previous delta variant.