The Chinese city of Xian remained under lockdown for a fifth day yesterday, as authorities reported 150 new local symptomatic COVID-19 cases for Sunday, a slight decrease from the previous day.
Case numbers in Xian, home to 13 million people, remain tiny compared with many clusters overseas, but authorities have imposed tough curbs on leaving the city and travel within it, because of Beijing’s drive to immediately contain outbreaks.
Authorities have not announced any infection caused by the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 in Xian, where there were 635 confirmed COVID-19 cases from Dec. 9 to Sunday.
Photo: Reuters
The 150 local symptomatic cases on Sunday compared with 155 a day earlier, and accounted for most of the 162 new domestic infections in China.
China reported a total of 158 domestically transmitted symptomatic cases for Sunday.
The new case number for Sunday marks the highest nationwide count of local symptomatic infections since the daily bulletin provided by the Chinese National Health Commission started to classify asymptomatic carriers separately from the end of March last year.
In Xian, residents cannot leave the city without approval from employers or local authorities.
From Thursday, households have been allowed to send only one person to shop for necessities every two days. Other family members cannot leave home unless they have essential jobs or urgent matters to attend to, approved by employers or communities.
Xian authorities yesterday urged residents to stay home except for having their sample taken in a new round of citywide testing.
Xian has also launched a citywide disinfection campaign, with workers spraying pathogen-killing solutions onto roads and buildings. People have been advised not to touch plants or building surfaces.
Jin Dong-yan (金冬雁), a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, said the mass disinfection of outdoor air and surfaces seemed unnecessary given the low risk of people catching COVID-19 from outdoor surfaces with so few people outside.
“This is shooting mosquitoes with cannon,” Jin said.
However, he said that disinfection of indoor surfaces, especially in places visit by infected people, is necessary.
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