Shanghai seals off street as city battles worst virus outbreak in two years

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.