Residents line up for a test at a COVID-19 testing site in Xi’an, northwestern China’s Shaanxi province, on Tuesday (December 21, 2021).
China ordered the closure of more than 13 million people in neighborhoods and workplaces in the northern city of Xi’an after a spike in coronavirus cases, sparking panic in the country just weeks before it is scheduled to host the Winter Olympic Games.
State media reported that city officials ordered all residents to stay at home unless they had any pressure to go out and suspended all transport to and from the city except in special cases. .
The order said that one person from each household would be allowed to buy household essentials every two days. It took effect from midnight on Wednesday, with no word on when it might be removed.
Social media posts registered a flurry of groceries and household products, with the government saying new supplies would be brought in on Thursday.
Xi’an on Thursday reported another 63 locally transmitted cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the city’s total to at least 211 in the past week. Xi’an is the capital of Shaanxi Province, famous for its imperial relics, as well as a major center of industry.
China is also dealing with substantial outbreaks in several cities in the eastern province of Zhejiang near Shanghai, though isolation measures have been targeted more narrowly there.
China has adopted strict epidemic control measures as part of its policy of reducing new transmissions to zero, leading to frequent lockdowns, universal masking and mass testing. While the policy has not been entirely successful due to the massive disruptions in travel and trade, Beijing attributes it largely to the spread of the virus.
Those measures have been stepped up in recent days ahead of the start of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games on February 4.
Xi’an restrictions are the harshest since the imposition of a strict lockdown on more than 11 million people in and around China’s central city of Wuhan in 2020, after the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019.
China has reported 4,636 deaths out of a total of 100,644 cases of COVID-19.
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