XI’AN, capital city of Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, has basically contained the spread of COVID-19 in communities one month after the resurgence of the epidemic hit the city, thanks to stringent containment measures such as city-level lockdown and rounds of mass nucleic acid testing.

The virus spread in communities had been basically cut off, Xu Mingfei, vice mayor of Xi’an, told a press conference Jan. 5. Xu said that all the new cases found over the previous rounds of nucleic acid testing were among the people who were quarantined at designated places [centralized quarantine] or at home.

Daily cases in Xi’an with a population of 13 million began to drop since the start of this year and slipped to two-digit numbers quickly, with 30 new cases, all in centralized quarantine, reported Saturday.

The city, a popular tourist destination known for the Terracotta Warriors, registered 1,989 locally transmitted confirmed cases as of Saturday since Dec. 9, 2021.

On Sunday, newly confirmed local cases in Xi’an dropped to 15, local authorities said yesterday.

The city has registered 2,004 local cases amid the latest resurgence. Of them, 350 had recovered by Sunday.

In another development, two COVID-19 local infections in Anyang City, Central China’s Henan Province, are confirmed to be caused by the Omicron variant, which has been classified as a member of Clade BA.1, local authorities said yesterday.

The two patients are believed to be linked to the same transmission chain as the existing local cases in Jinnan District, North China’s Tianjin Municipality, according to the city’s publicity department.

Previously, Tianjin detected its first two locally transmitted confirmed cases attributable to the VOC/Omicron variant in the fresh resurgence, all registered in the city’s Jinnan District.

Based on the epidemiological investigation and gene sequencing results, the source of the COVID-19 infections in Anyang has been identified as a college student who returned to Tangyin County of Anyang from Tianjin’s Jinnan District on Dec. 28, 2021.

Tianjin Municipality has reported 31 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 10 asymptomatic ones in the latest resurgence, local authorities said yesterday.

Henan reported 60 locally transmitted cases Sunday, of which 24 infections were detected in the capital city of Zhengzhou, 21 cases were in the city of Xuchang and 15 in Anyang, according to the National Health Commission yesterday. (Xinhua)