Software-Updater Fails, Error processing package base-files

Hey everyone, first time posting here.

I have bumped into a strange little bug. I launched Steam (.deb version) and it raised a terminal prompting to install dependencies. The same one it usually raises on first install. After attempting to install those dependencies, it failed and made reference to a problem with /var/lib/apt/lists/.

I then ran sudo apt clean and sudo apt update manually to see if that might help, but the terminal complained:

Reading package lists... Error!
E: Malformed 1st word in the Status line
E: Error occurred while processing gir1.2-soup-2.4 (UsePackage3)
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

I then ran sudo dpkg --configure -a which told me there was a problem with /var/lib/dpkg/status. On closer inspection the status file seems to have been corrupted and contained some garbled text. So I ran:

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/status
sudo touch /var/lib/dpkg/status
sudo apt update

Which looked like it solved the issue. I then ran the Software Updater to check for new packages, it downloaded those packages, but then failed to install and crashed out. I then ran the following:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

Setting up base-files (11ubuntu5.5+zorin1) ...
rmdir: failed to remove '/var/lock': Directory not empty
dpkg: error processing package base-files (--configure):
 installed base-files package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 base-files

sudo apt autoremove

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up base-files (11ubuntu5.5+zorin1) ...
rmdir: failed to remove '/var/lock': Directory not empty
dpkg: error processing package base-files (--configure):
 installed base-files package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 base-files
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

That's as far as I've gotten. I've got an idea it has something to do with 1 not fully installed or removed, but all the searches I've been doing are just sending me in circles. Do any of you have some advice, please?

Zorin OS 16.1 CORE

I solved the problem by performing the following commands:

sudo rm -rf /var/lock/*
sudo apt --fix-broken install
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

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