The northern Chinese city of Tianjin began testing its population of about 14 million for the coronavirus on Sunday after detecting two cases of the omicron variant, state media reported.
According to the local government, residents of four districts would be tested within the next 24 hours, and the rest of the city would do so the next day.
Local authorities have advised residents not to leave the city for unnecessary reasons. Residents will only receive travel passes after receiving a negative result for Covid. So far, the city has not been placed on lockdown.
The Tianjin omnipresent outbreak poses a threat to Beijing and the Winter Olympics, which will be held in the Chinese capital in February. That’s because there are many people who travel between the two cities for work, the state-run Global Times newspaper said, citing an immunologist who was not named.
Beijing residents were told to avoid travel to Tianjin, state news agency Xinhua reported.
The omicron variant, first identified in November in South Africa, is more transmissible than the original strain of the virus that causes Covid-19. The first case of an omnic in China was found in December in the southern city of Guangzhou.
China recorded 165 cases of Covid on Saturday (8) and 159 on Friday (7), the country’s authorities said on Sunday.
The country, which has been adopting tough restrictions to contain the spread of the virus with each new outbreak, has 4,536 deaths from Covid and more than 103,000 cases of the disease since the beginning of the pandemic.
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