The financial hub is in its third week of lockdown and continues to see more than 20,000 fresh Covid infections daily.

Everyone who tests positive must go to a quarantine centre. The city has built more than 100 makeshift hospitals with at least 160,000 beds and has converted schools and exhibition halls into quarantine centres, but space in these facilities has run out.  

The clashes on Thursday were sparked after authorities ordered 39 households to move out of their homes so the government could house new cases in the development, according to Zhangjiang Group, the developer of the housing complex.

The group said it had compensated the tenants and moved them into other units in the same compound. “The situation has now settled down” after “some tenants obstructed the construction” of a quarantine fence, it added.

Search results for the name of the apartment complex disappeared from China’s Twitter-like Weibo by Friday morning, but the footage could still be found online elsewhere.