Anyang, a city with a population of 5 million in Central China's Henan Province, began city-wide testing and imposed strict COVID-19 prevention measures, such as stopping outbound railway, bus and taxi services, after the city reported 26 COVID-19 cases during the past two days, two of which involved the Omicron variant, the same transmission chain as that found in Tianjin.
One of the two is a college student who returned to Anyang from Tianjin on December 28, 2021 and tested positive on Saturday, which the media said is the source of Anyang's outbreak this time.
Most of the confirmed cases in Anyang are students from a local middle school in the city's Tangyin county.
The local government has identified 1,495 close contacts and put them under quarantine. It began to test people in the whole city, and key areas like Tangyin county have already launched a second round of massive nucleic tests.
The city set up health monitoring points at every entrance and exit; suspended ticket sales for trains and buses that go out of the city, and ordered taxis and ride-hailing vehicles not to go out, a move to prevent Anyang's outbreak from spilling over.
Anyang has asked any resident who visited Tianjin's high-risk areas to report to local communities.
The Henan city has become the first place to be affected by the flare-up in Tianjin, which is now fighting a real battle against Omicron after two COVID-19 cases were found with the more contagious variant over the weekend. Tianjin reported 31 local confirmed cases during this round of outbreak, in addition to 10 silent carriers, said the local government on Monday.
Zhang Ying, deputy director of the Tianjin Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference on Saturday that the virus may have "been already spreading in the community for some time" before detection. Neither of the city's two Omicron cases had recently left Tianjin.
Tianjin took effective measures to prevent the spread of the viral infection, including a city-wide test of 14 million people, and it suspended tourist activities within the city and inter-provincial tourism starting on Monday.
