Chinese cities and factories lock down as COVID outbreak spreads

Seventeen million people in the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen began their first full day under lockdown Monday, as a key factory making iPhones closed and restrictions spread across Shanghai and other major cities in an effort to extinguish the biggest-ever threat to the nation's zero-tolerance COVID strategy.

The southern city of Shenzhen took the measures on Sunday as authorities battled an Omicron flare-up in factories and neighbourhoods linked to nearby Hong Kong, which is recording scores of daily deaths as the virus runs rampant.

Major Apple supplier Foxconn suspended its operations in Shenzhen, the company said Monday, as the lockdown bit hard into economic activity across the factory hub.

Shenzhen is one of ten areas nationwide to issue some level of stay-at-home order.

Health officials have warned tighter measures could be on their way, as concerns mount over the resilience of China's "zero-COVID" approach in the face of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant.

Authorities reported 2,300 new virus cases nationwide on Monday and almost 3,400 a day earlier, the highest daily figure in two years. 

"There have been many small-scale clusters in urban villages and factories,"...