A third Chinese city has been placed under strict lockdown as the country tries to contain a local outbreak of Covid-19, local officials said on Tuesday.
That brings the total number of people now confined to their homes in China to about 20 million, with the Beijing Winter Olympics only three weeks away.
Anyang municipal government said all 5.5 million residents of Anyang city in central Henan province are not allowed to leave their homes, while shops, restaurants and factories remain closed.
More than 4,000 students and staff of an Anyang school have been placed in government-run quarantine centers after nine people tested positive for the virus, local officials said.
A total of 84 Covid-19 cases have been reported in the city since the detection of two localized Omicron infections on January 8.
The National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement that China reported 110 new locally symptomatic cases on Tuesday. China counts asymptomatic cases separately.
Strict Lockout: Anyang is the third Chinese city after Xi’an in northwestern Shaanxi province and Henan too, to impose a complete COVID lockdown.
On 23 December sanctions were imposed on Xi’an’s 13 million residents. In those days and weeks, complaints of food shortages and reports of patients being denied medical care shook the country.
On January 2, Yuzhou, home to 1.2 million people, was placed under lockdown after three asymptomatic cases were reported.
According to the NHC, Yuzhou reported 74 symptomatic local cases on Monday, the largest current outbreak in the country.
Meanwhile, 29 residential communities in the city of Tianjin are under lockdown after Omicron on Saturday traced at least two residents – China’s first reported community spread of the highly communicable version.
Tianjin reported 21 infections on Monday – 11 symptomatic and 10 asymptomatic – taking the total number of its current outbreak to 53.
The city of 14 million is located just 130 kilometers (80 mi) southeast of Beijing, where the Winter Olympics begin on 4 February.
Zero-Covid Strategy: China is one of the only places in the world that is still aiming to eliminate COVID-19 within its borders.
But the closure residents’ despair underscores the growing challenge facing its zero-Covid policy, which relies on a playbook of massive testing, widespread quarantines and snap lockdowns to seal any resurgence of the virus.