China 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 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.
One person from each household would be permitted out every two days to buy household necessities, the order said. It took effect at midnight Wednesday, with no word on when it might be lifted.
There was no word on whether the virus was the newly surging Omicron variant or the far more common Delta. China has recorded just seven Omicron cases — four in the southern manufacturing centre of Guangzhou, two in the southern city of Changsha and one in the northern port of Tianjin.