Weather of Arabia - After the fast-spreading "Delta" mutator arrived in more than 20 Chinese cities and 12 provinces, China imposed closures on millions of residents in an attempt to contain the largest outbreak of the Corona virus in the country in months.
The latest wave, described by state media as the "biggest spread of Covid since the outbreak in Wuhan", began when airport workers in Nanjing who cleaned a plane from Russia tested positive.
The government has tested millions of residents in major cities, including Beijing, for the coronavirus, while cordoning off apartment blocks and placing people they came into contact with under quarantine.
While the number of infections is relatively small, they are scattered across the country, leading state media to compare them to the initial outbreak in Wuhan in 2019.
In Beijing, which previously boasted of its success in bringing the number of domestic infections to almost zero after the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, allowing the economy to rebound, the latest outbreak linked to the infection of nine cleaners at an international airport on July 20 , threatens that success with more than 360 local infections reported in the past two weeks.
In Zhangjiajie, a tourist destination near Zhuzhou, the disease spread last month among theater-goers who brought the virus home across the country.
According to an official statement, the government of Zhuzhou City in central Hunan Province ordered more than 1.2 million residents on Monday (August 2) to stay at home under a strict lockdown for the next three days, as a citywide testing and vaccination campaign began.
Zhang Jiajie also imposed a lockdown on the entire population of 1.5 million on Friday.
Officials are urgently searching for people who have recently traveled from Nanjing or Zhangjiajie, and have urged tourists not to travel to areas where infections have been detected.
Meanwhile, Beijing has banned tourists from entering the capital during the peak summer holiday travel season.
While only "essential travelers" with negative DNA tests will be allowed entry after a small number of cases were discovered among residents who returned from Zhang Jiajie.
Senior city officials on Sunday called on residents to "not leave Beijing unless necessary."
And authorities in the capital's Changping district imposed a closure on 41,000 people in nine residential communities last week.
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