China tightens confinement in the northeast due to covid rebound

Chinese authorities announced on Sunday a tightening of lockdown measures in the northeast of the country, just as the southern metropolis of Shenzhen was preparing to lift its restrictions.

The Asian country recorded 4,053 new cases of covid this Sunday, two-thirds of them in Jilin, a province bordering North Korea and Russia.

The inhabitants of the homonymous city of Jilin, with 4.5 million inhabitants, will not be able to leave their homes for three days from midnight on Monday, the mayor's office said.

The city of Changchun, which has been confined since the beginning of the month, announced that it will tighten its measures for three days and now only medical personnel and others linked to the pandemic will be able to leave.

Since the beginning of the lockdown on March 11, Changchun's 9 million inhabitants could go out once every two days to buy food.

Last Sunday, the technological metropolis of Shenzhen, located at the gates of Hong Kong, confined its 17.5 million inhabitants.

However, the southern city, which is home to thousands of factories of big names in technology, partially lifted some restrictions.

Public transport will fully resume from Monday, as well as administrations and part of the economic activity, health authorities said on Sunday.

China, where coronavirus was first detected in late 2019, had largely managed to contain the pandemic using strict lockdown measures since the beginning of 2020, but the omicron variant has caused numerous outbreaks across the country in recent months.

The new measures come after China recorded its first two deaths from covid-19 on Saturday in more than a year.

Tens of millions of people are currently confined across the country and authorities are working to free up hospital beds amid fears that the outbreak could put the health system under great pressure.

Jilin province, which registered thousands of cases last week, has built eight temporary hospitals and two quarantine centers to deal with the outbreak.

In addition, the northern city of Tangshan, the base of China's steel industry, imposed a 24-hour traffic ban on Sunday to stop the spread of the virus and examine its 7.7 million inhabitants.

sbr/at/mis/en