Six weeks from the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, China is moving into panic mode and locking down whole cities over a single COVID-19 case.
One such instance this week was the southern Chinese city of Dongxing, which barred all travelers from entering on Wednesday after one COVID-19 case was detected.
Residents of Dongxing were instructed to quarantine and only leave their homes to get essential items, per state-linked media outlet Beijing Evening News. In addition to this lockdown, schools, public transport, and non-essential local businesses have shut down, and all of the city's 200,000 residents are required to show up for mass COVID-19 testing.
The lockdown in Dongxing comes at the same time as a lockdown in Xi'an, in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. According to The Guardian, Xi'an imposed travel curbs across the city, forcing close to 13 million people into quarantine.
China has consistently taken a hard tack to prevent the spread of coronavirus. In April, smaller-scale outbreaks of COVID cases in the southwestern Yunnan province were met with aggressive mass-testing measures and 72-hour city-wide lockdowns. In late October, around 30,000 people found themselves trapped in Shanghai's Disneyland after one positive COVID-19 case was detected, unable to leave until every visitor and employee was tested. And in November, Shanghai canceled more than 500 flights and shut down schools after three COVID infections were detected there.
China's overall reported COVID-19 cases remain relatively low. According to the country's National Health Commission, 100 infections were detected across 31 provinces on December 22, bringing the number of active cases to 1,823.
While China's reported case numbers have been consistently low since its initial Wuhan outbreak, the country does not include patients who test positive for the virus but are asymptomatic in its official tally.
The Beijing Olympics are set to kick off on February 4, 2022. The country plans to implement a "closed-loop" bubble, where athletes, officials, broadcasters, and journalists alike will be able to move only within designated locales.
