SHANGHAI: Several cities in China’s tourism hub Hainan extended lockdowns upon Friday (Aug 12), with some of the procedures expected to last with the weekend, while Lhasa in Tibet also tightened restrictions, among the latest curbs in order to contain COVID-19 groupings in the country.
Under the “dynamic COVID zero” policy that aims at quickly ending each outbreak from spreading, local government authorities have imposed shorter lockdowns where individuals were barred from unnecessary movements for a few days or weeks till clusters were included within narrower areas.
Such lockdowns were less unpleasant than the two-month pathogen battle fought simply by Shanghai in the spring, but the growing spread of Omicron across China may lead to more cities made susceptible to such measures together with the potential disruption to local businesses.
In the southern province of Hainan, currently, the worst-hit Chinese language region, two cities, Dongfang and Chengmai, with a total people of around nine hundred, 000, said on Friday they would add days to the lockdowns on their residents, extending what was previously scheduled for three to four days to around per week.
Hainan’s provincial capital Haikou on Friday put its 2 . 9 human population in lockdown between 7. 00am and 6. 00pm local time, following similar restrictions that protected main hours upon Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Various million in other cities in Hainan, including Sanya, were below lockdown without very clear dates of when the curbs would be raised.
In the traditional western region of Tibet, the biggest city Lhasa told residents never to go out unless they have got special and immediate matters to attend to among Friday and Monday, as COVID-19 workers carried out disinfection work in main urban areas.
Outside Hainan plus Tibet, small cities that told residents not to leave home unnecessarily in fresh lockdowns include Fengcheng within the southeastern province of Jiangxi and Kuqa in the western region of Xinjiang.
Mainland China documented 1, 851 locally transmitted new coronavirus infections on Aug 11, of which 648 were symptomatic and 1, 203 had been asymptomatic, the Nationwide Health Commission said on Friday.
Those new situations were reported throughout more than a dozen provinces, regions and municipalities, but mostly in Hainan.
There were no new fatalities, keeping the nation’s deaths at 5, 226.
The financial hub of Shanghai reported seven new local cases upon Aug11, while the southern part of technology hub of Shenzhen reported a single new local situation.
China’s capital Beijing reported simply no new local cases.