China reports 13,000 Covid cases, most since end of Wuhan’s first wave

China reported 13,000 Covid cases on Sunday, the most since the peak of the first pandemic wave over two years ago, as health officials said they have found a suspected new subtype of the Omicron variant in the Shanghai area.

China's "zero-Covid" strategy is under extreme pressure as the virus whips across the country.

Until March, China had successfully kept the daily caseload down to double or triple digits, with hard, localised lockdowns, mass testing, and travel restrictions.

But cases have surged over recent weeks to thousands each day, especially in the outbreak epicentre of Shanghai, where streets were eerily empty on Sunday as 25 million people stayed in under lockdown orders.

Officials in Suzhou, a city 30 minutes west of Shanghai, have detected a mutation of the Omicron variant not found in local or international databases, state media reported on Sunday.

"This means a new variant of Omicron has been discovered locally," Xinhua said, citing health official Zhang Jun, deputy director of the Suzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The current outbreak is also testing the patience of the Chinese towards tough restrictions, at a time when much of the world has re-opened.

On Sunday, the 1.5 million residents of Baicheng in northeast China joined the ranks of tens of millions of other Chinese who have endured some form of lockdown over the last month, disrupting work and damaging the economy.

China recorded 13,146 cases on Sunday, the National Health Commission said in a statement, with "no new deaths" reported.

It is the country's highest daily infection tally since mid-February 2020.

Nearly 70 percent of the national caseload was found in Shanghai, the commission said, after mass...