Covid rages in China again, industrial city locked down

Beijing: After a brief lull of depleting covid cases, the pandemic is back in the limelight again with China locking down a major industrial city.

Reports from China say that authorities shut down a city of nine million people over night after reporting 4,000 case on Tuesday.

4,770 new infections have been reported across the country mostly from the northeastern province of Jilin.

Authorities on Monday locked down the city of Shenyang in neighbouring Liaoning province.

China is hard put to fight another wave of increasing covid cases amid its "zero-Covid" strategy.

In the past many weeks, China was leading coordinated efforts to wipe out every cluster of covid case through mass testing and lockdowns.

In the midst of these efforts the nation reported two Covid-19 deaths on Saturday, the first in over a year.

Shenyang where carmaker BMW has its base reported 47 new cases Tuesday.

Authorities were quick to respond with restrictions that saw all housing compounds under "closed management". Residents were barred from leaving without a 48-hour negative test result.

Beijing's healthcare has been overly stressed from raging Omicron cases and authorities asked patients with mild cases leave hospitals.

Reports say that many cities including Shanghai preferred lockdown of individual buildings to complete shutdown.