remained relatively calm, with people allowed to travel in and out of the compounds in which they live.
According
to report, China ordered the lockdown of as many as 13 million people in
neighbourhoods and workplaces in the northern city of Xi'an following a spike
in coronavirus cases, setting off panic buying just weeks before the country
hosts the Winter Olympic Games.
State
media reported that city officials ordered all residents to stay home unless
they had a pressing reason to go out and suspended all transport to and from
the city apart from special cases.
One person
from each household will be permitted out every two days to buy household
necessities, the order said. It took effect at midnight Wednesday, with no word
on when it might be lifted.
There was
no word on whether the virus was the newly surging omicron variant or the far
more common delta. China has recorded just seven omicron cases — four in the
southern manufacturing center of Guangzhou, two in the southern city of
Changsha and one in the northern port of Tianjin.
Xi’an on
Thursday reported another 63 locally transmitted cases over the previous 24
hours, pushing the city's total to at least 211 over the past week. Xi'an is
the capital of Shaanxi province, famed for its imperial relics, as well as a
major center of industry.
China has
also been dealing with a substantial outbreak in several cities in the eastern
province of Zhejiang near Shanghai, although isolation measures there have been
more narrowly targeted.
China has
adopted strict pandemic control measures under its policy of seeking to drive
new transmissions to zero, leading to frequent lockdowns, universal masking and
mass testing. While the policy has not been entirely successful while leading
to massive disruptions in travel and trade, Beijing credits it with largely
containing the spread of the virus.
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