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Beijing, Dec 22 (AP) China on Wednesday ordered the lockdown of as many as 13 million people in neighbourhoods and workplaces in the northern city of Xi’an following a spike in coronavirus cases, setting off panic buying just weeks before the country hosts the Winter Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
State media reported that city officials ordered all residents to stay home unless they had a pressing reason to go out and suspended all transport to and from the city apart from special cases.<\/p>\n
The order was to take effect at midnight and last indefinitely.<\/p>\n
One person from each household will be permitted out every two days to buy household necessities, the order said.<\/p>\n
Xi’an on Wednesday reported 52 new locally transmitted cases of the coronavirus over the previous 24 hours.<\/p>\n
China has adopted strict pandemic control measures under its zero-transmission programme, leading to frequent lockdowns, universal masking and mass testing.<\/p>\n
Those measures have been stepped up in recent days ahead of the start of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games on February 4.<\/p>\n
The Xi’an restrictions are some of the harshest since China in 2020 imposed a strict lockdown on more than 11 million people in and around the central city of Wuhan after COVID-19 was first detected there in late 2019.<\/p>\n
Social media posts recorded panic buying of groceries and household products, with the government saying new supplies would be brought in on Thursday. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beijing, Dec 22 (AP) China on Wednesday ordered the lockdown of as many as 13 million people in neighbourhoods and workplaces in the northern city of Xi’an following a spike in coronavirus cases, setting off panic buying just weeks before the country hosts the Winter Olympic Games. State media reported that city officials ordered all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-180064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}