Xi'an, the ancient city in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, started this month's third round of mass testing on 13 million people on Thursday following the highest number of positive COVID-19 cases found in a single day. It has also canceled all flights at its airport and put all residential communities under closed management.
The Xi'an Xianyang International Airport cancelled all domestic flights on Thursday. Chinese flight tracking platform Feichangzhun showed that 765 flights that were scheduled on Thursday have been cancelled. Trains to multiple cities have also been suspended.
The lockdown in Xi'an is one of the largest lockdowns in the country this year. Yang Zhanqiu, a deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, said the key reason for the lockdown lies in the scale of community transmission in Xi'an and unclear epidemiological routes - the outbreak has demonstrated at least three transmission chains.
Facing pressure of the upcoming New Year and Spring Festival travel rush, lockdown is necessary to contain the emerging epidemic within a small scale, Yang said, adding that hemorrhagic fever, a natural epidemic disease with a high fatality rate, poses dual challenge for the city to respond.
The novel coronavirus has been sneakily transmitted within communities and community transmission has already reached a certain scale. The epidemic, characterized with the Delta strain, has entered its peak period, local officials said at a press conference on Wednesday night.
The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported 55 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the National Health Commission said in its daily report on Friday.
Of the new local cases, 52 were reported in Shaanxi, and one each in Zhejiang, Guangdong and Guangxi, the commission said.
Also reported were 32 new imported cases in 10 provincial-level regions, according to the commission.
