As it strives to combat the country’s largest coronavirus outbreak in two years, China has issued COVID-19 lockdown orders to millions more individuals in the country’s northeast.
Starting Monday, the city of Jilin will shut down 4.5 million people for three days to help stop the spread of China’s largest coronavirus outbreak.
Since bringing the virus under control in 2020 with targeted lockdowns, mass testing, and travel restrictions, the country has largely kept the virus at bay.
The COVID-19 Omicron strain, on the other hand, has spread throughout China. Local authorities have stated that Jilin, the province’s second-largest city, will be shut down for three days starting Monday night.
On Sunday, China reported more than 4,000 new cases, with two-thirds of them in Jilin province, which borders Russia and North Korea.
Changchun, the capital of Jilin province, announced on Saturday that restrictions would be tightened for three days.
China reported its first two COVID-19 deaths in almost a year on Saturday. The deaths, which occurred in Jilin province, raise the total number of coronavirus deaths in China to 4,638 since the outbreak began.
Both deaths occurred in elderly patients and were the result of their underlying diseases, according to Jiao Yahui, a National Health Commission official, who spoke at a news conference on Saturday. She said that one of them had not been vaccinated against COVID-19.