39 Covid deaths in Shanghai in a single day

China's capital Beijing has gone on high alert as the situation turned “grim” following the emergence of clusters of COVID-19, while the country's financial hub Shanghai reported 39 more deaths due to the virus, the highest in a day so far during the current outbreak since last month. The Chinese mainland on Saturday reported 21,796 cases, including 1,566 positive cases and the rest asymptomatic cases mostly in Shanghai, China’s National Health Commission reported on Sunday.

Beijing, the seat of China’s top leadership, went on high COVID-19 alert as the city braced to test some sections of the population after the city recorded 22 new



community cases on Saturday. The city went on high alert after 10 middle school students tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday following which city officials suspended classes in the school for a week.

On Saturday, Shanghai reported 23,370 new cases, taking the city’s total to about 466,000 since March 1. The city of 26 million people on Saturday reported 39 deaths from COVID-19, bringing the death toll to 87 so far in the city since it went into lockdown at the end of last month following the emergence of the Omicron virus. With this, China's overall death toll due to coronavirus, ever since it first emerged in Wuhan in 2019 December, rose to 4,725.