China locks down city of 1.2 million

More than one million people in a city in central China were being confined to their homes yesterday after three asymptomatic coronavirus cases were recorded in the country’s latest mass lockdown.

Beijing has pursued a “zero Covid” approach with tight border restrictions and targeted lockdowns since the virus first emerged.

But the strategy has come under pressure with a series of recent local outbreaks and with just a month to go until the Winter Olympics.

Yuzhou, a city with a population of around 1.17 million people in Henan province, announced that from Monday night all citizens were required to stay home to control the spread of the virus.

The announcement was triggered by the discovery of three cases in the last couple of days.

People in the central area “must not go out”, according to a statement posted on Monday, while all communities will set up “sentinels and gates to strictly implement epidemic prevention and control measures”.

The city had already announced that it was halting bus and taxi services and closing shopping malls, museums and tourist attractions.

China reported another 175 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, including five in Henan province and eight more in a separate cluster linked to a factory in the eastern city of Ningbo. New infections in recent weeks have reached a high not seen since March 2020.