The Chinese government has placed all 17.5 million residents in one of its biggest cities under lockdown on Sunday.
China on Sunday reported nearly 3,400 domestic Covid-19 cases including 1,807 symptomatic ones, the highest in over two years, across 19 provinces, forcing new lockdowns and travel restrictions to contain the outbreak.
The Chinese government has placed all 17.5 million residents in one of its biggest cities under lockdown on Sunday.
The southern tech hub of Shenzhen told all residents to stay at home as the city struggles to eradicate an Omicron flare-up linked to neighbouring virus-ravaged Hong Kong.
Shenzhen reported 66 new infections on Sunday – a fraction of the 32,430 confirmed the same day in Hong Kong.
The 1,807 cases for Saturday across China were more than triple the caseload of 476 for the previous day. The surge in cases in the past few days has health authorities scrambling to control the localised clusters of both Omicron and Delta varieties of the infection.
While China’s count of Covid-19 cases is far lower than those of many other countries, the sharp surge in numbers could complicate Beijing’s “dynamic-clearance” policy to suppress the outbreak as quickly as possible.
The city of Jilin has been partially locked down with hundreds of neighbourhoods sealed up, an official announced on Sunday, while Yanji, an urban area of nearly 700,000 bordering North Korea, was fully closed off.
The largest number of new infections at 1,412 were reported in Jilin, a city in northeast China’s similarly named Jilin province.
“As of Sunday, Jilin province registered a total of 2,052 confirmed cases and 1,527 asymptomatic cases, involving at least seven cities within the province, with Jilin city and Changchun having severe outbreaks,” Chinese state media reported.
(With inputs from agencies)
