Five million residents of a central Chinese city started home confinement on Tuesday in a new lockdown to curb the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus, according to state media, APA reports citing The Economic Times.
Beijing is on high alert for new outbreaks as it prepares to host the Winter Olympics next month, sticking to a "zero-Covid" strategy of targeted lockdowns, border restrictions and lengthy quarantines.
While those measures have kept the number of new cases far lower than virus hotspots in the United States and Europe, Beijing is currently battling local flare-ups in multiple cities.