Virus back in China, 13 mn residents in lockdown

Beijing: China is redoubling efforts to control new virus outbreaks with a lockdown of the 13 million residents of the northern city of Xi’an following a spike in coronavirus cases.

The measure comes just weeks before the country hosts the Winter Olympics in Beijing, roughly 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) to the northeast.

There was no word on whether the virus was the newly surging omicron variant or the far more common delta. China has reported 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.

China has also been dealing with a substantial coronavirus outbreak in several cities in the eastern province of Zhejiang near Shanghai, although isolation measures there have been more narrowly targeted.

Authorities have adopted strict pandemic control measures under their 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 and has led to massive disruptions of travel and trade, Beijing credits it with largely containing the spread of the virus.