China puts Xian, a city of 13 million under lockdown

Beijing: China is facing yet another COVID-19 outbreak forcing the government to put a lockdown on northwest Chinese city of Xian. State media reported the lockdown in Xi'an is one of the largest lockdowns in the country this year as the city has imposed tight curbs on outbound travel as well as ordinary commuting within the city.

As the new year celebrations are approaching amid the scare of Omicron variant and Beijing Winter Olympics not far, this new serious outbreak has forced the authorities to put all residential communities under closed management in the city of 13 million people. Xian has also cancelled all flights and trains from the city. Xian is also facing a spike in hemorrhagic fever cases, a natural epidemic disease with a high fatality rate that poses a dual challenge for the city to respond.

Since the first case on December 9, Xi'an has registered a total of 234 confirmed cases of Delta variant in two weeks. Wednesday saw 127 newly found positive cases, the highest number recorded in a single day. The local outbreak has spilled over to at least four other cities, including Yan'an, Xianyang in Shaanxi Province, Dongguan in South China's Guangdong Province, and Beijing. Authorities in Xian have not reported any local cases of the Omicron variant even



though the cases are found in other provinces of China.

From Thursday, all residents in the city, home to about 13 million people, were required to stay indoors. Only one family member of each household is allowed to leave the house to purchase daily necessities every two days. Other than special needs such as sickness or participating in anti-epidemic work, people are not encouraged to go outside.  Xi'an now has one high-risk and 40 medium-risk regions. If residents have special reasons to leave the city, they must present a negative nucleic acid test certificate and an official letter from the local government.  

Local officials had issued stay-at-home orders to more than 13 million residents as the city put all communities to closed management starting from Wednesday midnight to slow down rampant viral transmission. For Wednesday, mainland China confirmed a total of 71 local symptomatic cases, including 63 in Xian, according to a statement by the National Health Commission. 

There were no new deaths, leaving the national death toll at 4,636. Mainland China had 100,644 confirmed cases as of Dec. 22, including both local ones and those found among international travellers.