Beijing: China has ordered the residents of South Baise City to stay at home and suspend the transportation link amid a surge in Covid-19 cases at least partly associated with Omicron variants.
Classes have been suspended, non-essential businesses are closed and populated bulk testing ordered.
The restaurant is only allowed to serve take-out.
Traffic lights have switched to Red only to remind drivers to stay at home.
On Tuesday, 135 cases have been reported in at least two cities including omicron, said health authority.
The city has become the latest to be placed under locking according to the ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to a pandemic.
The policy requires strict steps applied even when only a small number of cases found.
The main concern is to prevent the plague during the ongoing Beijing Winter Olympics.
There were no new cases reported in the Chinese capital on Tuesday.
More than 30 athletes at the Beijing Olympics are in isolation facilities after testing Positive Koronavirus, said Tuesday organizers.
On average stay in isolation is seven days.
Baise has an urban population of around 1.4 million, with 3 million other in the surrounding countryside which borders the Vietnam border.
The media of the country reported customs at the intersection point of Longbang and Pingmeng was postponed, causing further disturbances to cross-border trade that had caused major losses in Vietnamese fruit farmers who rely on the Chinese market for most of their income.
The first cases in Baise were reported on Saturday at the end of the Chinese New Year vacation tail, when many Chinese trips dropped the distance to their hometown.
For the third year it runs, the government asks people to stay in a place to avoid large spread, although such calls only have a little effect on the number of trips taken.
Apart from occasional regional outbreaks, China has largely brought a controlled pandemic through locking, bulk testing, case search, mask mandate, and other strict steps.
Nearly 85% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to our world in the data, although the question has been raised about the efficacy of the Chinese vaccine, especially against omicron tensions.
The Chinese health authority said the emergence of a sustainable outbreak even though the high level of vaccination justified the continued implementation of the ‘zero tolerance’ ‘policy and tourist quarantine coming from abroad.
At the same time, the locking imposed in December and January at millions of residents in the city of northern and the middle has been appointed.
China has reported a total of 106,524 cases of Covid-19, with 4,636 deaths.
At present, 1,473 people are treated for this disease.