Sanya, a tourism hotspot, imposed lockdown measures from Thursday in most parts of the city, ordering residents to reduce their trips outside to shop for daily necessities to once every two days and confining some strictly to their homes.
Starting from Thursday, except for low-risk regions of Haitang Bay, Yalong Bay and the Yucai ecological zone, residents in other regions need to present a negative nucleic acid testing results obtained within 24 hours or a sampling record on the day (a negative record from the previous day is required) before entering public venues, residential communities and government agencies, Sanya authorities said.
For high-risk regions, people are not allowed to go out of their homes, and related delivery services will be provided, according to the authorities.
A total of 30 high-risk regions and 19 medium-risk regions were added on Thursday in the city.
This round of the epidemic was caused by an imported variant, the Omicron BA.5.1.3 strain, according to local authorities on Thursday. The central fishing port of Yazhou district was the origin of the outbreak starting on Monday, which was likely to have been imported through trading with overseas fishermen, the local authorities said during Thursday's press briefing.