Staff members of Shanghai Pudong International Airport line up at a nucleic acid testing site in Shanghai, China. Reuters

Shanghai Municipality has quarantined hundreds of people in an attempt to halt a fresh coronavirus outbreak in the city after two new locally-transmitted COVID-19 cases at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Friday.

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The infections were detected in cargo workers at its airport, the Chinese municipal government said on Saturday. The both workers at the operation zone handling freight aircraft from abroad tested positive in a regular nucleic acid test.

Both of them were vaccinated against coronavirus before.

An elderly man (centre) looks out from a window in his room at a nursing home in Shanghai, China, on Saturday. AP

Some 120 people deemed close contacts of the infected five workers at Pudong Airport were placed into quarantine, along with hundreds of others deemed secondary contacts.

Samples of 40,097 people in Shanghai have been collected, and so far, the results of 8,151 are negative. The other samples are still being tested.

Another two local cases were found in Jiangsu and Hubei provinces. Separate, unrelated outbreaks first emerged in those regions in July.

The national figure was down from 33 a day earlier, according to the National Health Commission, with locally transmitted infections steady at four.

Shanghai officials said later on Saturday they had identified another three cargo workers at Pudong Airport as confirmed cases.