Coronavirus: hundreds of flights cancelled at busy Shanghai airport as China tackles local outbreak

Hundreds of flights at one of China’s busiest airports were cancelled on Tuesday as Shanghai raced to bring a local coronavirus outbreak under control. Health officials have tested thousands of staff at Pudong International Airport since a small cluster of Covid-19 cases in the city was linked to several cargo handlers. China has largely brought the pandemic under control through travel restrictions and lockdowns but it is now battling a number of domestic outbreaks in different cities. Shanghai has reported seven local infections linked to the airport this month, with most cases found in the past few days. The outbreak has sparked plans to give high-risk workers at the travel hub an experimental vaccine that China has already been giving state employees, international students and essential workers heading abroad since July. On Tuesday, figures from data services firm VariFlight showed that more than 500 flights out of Pudong airport had been called off – nearly half the day’s scheduled flights. Almost half of the scheduled inbound flights were also cancelled. More than 17,700 people had been swabbed by Monday morning as part of a drive to test airport cargo staff, state news agency Xinhua reported, with those infected including employees at logistics firms FedEx and UPS.<br/>