Chinese city’s authorities say they have secured food and other essentials for residents after complaints about deliveries

More than 11,000 recovered Covid-19 patients were discharged in Shanghai on Sunday, and health authorities emphasised that they must be allowed to return home despite the lockdown that has severely restricted movement in China’s largest city.

“We hope their family and community will not worry about them or discriminate against them,” said Wu Jinglei, the director of the Shanghai municipal health commission.

Reports that parents were being separated from their infected children has sparked a flood of online protest

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Shanghai is allowing at least some parents to stay with children infected with Covid-19, making an exception to a policy of isolating anyone who tests positive after a public outcry.

The announcement came as China’s largest city remained in lockdown and conducted more mass testing on Wednesday following another jump in new cases.

Residents of China’s most populous city complain of government’s lack of organisation

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Shanghai has put all its 26 million residents under lockdown in China’s single-biggest city-wide imposition of the restrictions since the pandemic began as authorities admitted the difficulty in containing the fast-spreading Omicron variant.

Until this week, the megacity – also China’s most populous – adopted an approach of phased lockdown. Initially, the eastern side of the Huangpu River went into lockdown between 28 March and 1 April, then the western side followed suit for another four days.