Crowds of people crashed through Covid barriers and battled with Hazmat-clad officials in China last night amid fears of further coronavirus curbs.
Among the latest outbreaks in China, Guangzhou's is the largest, with new daily infections of Covid-19 topping 5,000 for the first time and fuelling speculation that localised lockdowns could widen.
Videos widely shared on Twitter showed noisy scenes in Guangzhou's Haizhu district of people charging down streets and remonstrating with white hazmat-suit-clad workers.
Twitter is blocked in China, and several hashtags related to the topic of "riots" in the area were scrubbed from China's Twitter-like Weibo by Tuesday morning.
Neither the Guangzhou city government nor the Guangdong provincial police responded to Reuters' requests for comment.
"It was quite tense out there last night. Everyone made sure their doors were locked," said a Guangzhou resident who uses the name Chet and lives about a kilometre from where the protest took place.
"He said local chat groups and social media feeds had been flooded with videos and pictures of the episode.
"When it happened so close to me I found it really upsetting.
"I couldn't sleep last night after watching those images," said Chet, whose residential compound has been locked down for about 20 days.
On Tuesday, China reported 17,772 new local COVID-19 infections for Nov.14, up from 16,072 a day earlier and the most since April, even as many cities scaled back routine testing after authorities announced measures last week aimed at easing the impact of heavy coronavirus curbs.
In the capital Beijing, new infections hit a record 462 for Monday. Major cities including Chongqing and Zhengzhou were among the worst-hit.
Still, China is scrambling to limit the damage of its zero-COVID policy nearly three years into the pandemic, as the latest in a spate of dismal economic reports showed retail sales fell in October and factory output grew more slowly than expected.
While many residents have expressed guarded optimism after Friday's announcement that some of the stringent COVID policies would be eased, concerns grew this week over the worsening outbreaks and there was confusion as some cities halted or adjusted regular testing.
At the end of last month, it was estimated that 200 million people were placed under strict new Covid restrictions.
The country imposed the measures on 28 cities, including Wuhan, where the deadly virus was first discovered almost three years ago.
The 'highly contagious’ new strain has seen the severe steps taken try to kill-off the threat.
Leader Xi Jinping's zero-Covid policy has come under criticism after he called it a "people's war to stop the spread of the virus".
New data released from specialist firm Nomura showed around 208 million people are currently living under some level of lockdown.
Two highly contagious subvariants of Omicron have panicked officials, who say BF.7 and BA.5.1.7 are responsible for a spike this month.
"According to government statistics and our survey, 28 cities are currently implementing various levels of lockdown or some kind of district-based control measures," Nomura stated.
800,000 people in Wuhan were told to remain indoors until October 30.
