Covid: Beijing begins mass testing of 3.5 million people as Shanghai reports 51 deaths, highest in a day

Beijing on Monday began mass COVID-19 testing of over 3.5 million people in one of the city's high-profile districts following a spike in cases, while Shanghai reported a record 51 deaths in a day as the eastern metropolis continued to grapple with the Omicron variant for the fourth week.

Beijing's local government has ordered Chaoyang district, home to some 3.5 million residents, to have three rounds of mass nucleic acid testing starting from Monday after the district registered the most COVID-19 cases in the capital's latest epidemic surge, official media reported.

The test applies to those who are living and working in the district, which will be conducted respectively on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the Chaoyang disease prevention and control leading team said in a notice on Sunday.

According to China's National Health Commission report released on Monday, Beijing reported 14 cases on Sunday of which 11 of them were in Chaoyang district which is the central part of the city where the top Chinese leadership resides.

The Chinese mainland on Sunday reported over 20,190 cases, majority of them being asymptomatic cases.

Shanghai, a vast city of 26 million people, has reported 2,472 positive cases and 16,983 asymptomatic cases.

On Sunday, the city's COVID-19 death toll crossed 100 in the current outbreak.

The city reported 51 deaths on Sunday, the highest in a single day, taking the toll to 138.

With this, China's overall death toll due to coronavirus, ever since it first emerged in the central city of Wuhan in December 2019 rose to 4,776.

Apart from Shanghai, 17 other provincial-level regions on the mainland saw new local COVID-19 cases, including 79 in Jilin, 26 in Heilongjiang, 14 in Beijing and 29,178 confirmed COVID-19 cases undergoing treatment in hospitals across the country.