There Are Three Cases Of COVID-19, China Locks Down A City Of 1.2 Million People

JAKARTA - More than 1 million people in a city in central China were locked in their homes starting Tuesday, after three asymptomatic coronavirus cases were recorded in the country's latest mass lockdown.

Beijing has been pursuing a 'zero-COVID-19 approach with strict border restrictions, as well as targeted lockdowns since the virus first emerged.

But the strategy has come under pressure with a series of recent local outbreaks, with only one more month to go until the Winter Olympics.

Yuzhou, a city of about 1.17 million people in Henan Province, announced that starting Monday evening all citizens will be required to stay at home to control the spread of the virus. The announcement was triggered by the discovery of three cases in recent days.

People in the central area "shouldn't go out", according to a statement posted Monday, while all communities will set up "guards and gates to strictly implement epidemic prevention and control measures".

Citing CNA on January 4, the city has announced it is ceasing public bus and taxi services, as well as closing shopping malls, museums, and tourist attractions.

China reported 175 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, including five in Henan Province and eight more in a separate cluster linked to a garment factory in the eastern city of Ningbo.

Despite low reported cases compared to other places in the world, infections of the new coronavirus in recent weeks have reached their highest level not seen in the country since March 2020.

There were 95 new cases recorded in Xi'an Tuesday, a historic city of 13 million people in the neighboring province of Shaanxi, which has been under lockdown for nearly two weeks.

The city of Xi'an alone has reported more than 1.600 cases since December 9, although the number in recent days has started to decline compared to last week's figures.

Local authorities deemed to have failed in preventing virus outbreaks in China have often been fired or punished, prompting a series of increasingly stringent responses from provincial governments as they try to stamp out any cases quickly.

In Xi'an, two senior Communist Party officials in the northern city were removed from their posts for "lack of scrutiny in preventing and controlling the outbreak". And last month, China's disciplinary body announced that dozens of officials had been punished for failing to prevent an outbreak in the city.

The spike in cases of COVID-19 infection comes as Beijing prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympics next month.