China set a two-year record on Sunday, when 3,393 new COVID-19 cases were reported, the National Health Commission said, as per news agency AFP. This is the highest daily figure since February 2020.

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The numbers were reported as China instituted new COVID-19 restrictions that included urging the public not to leave Beijing the and closing schools in Shanghai. 

“Please do not leave Beijing unless necessary,” a spokesman for the capital’s Communist Party committee, Xu Hejian, was cited as saying by state TV.

On Friday, China ordered a lockdown of the nine million residents of the northeastern city of Changchun amid a new spike in COVID-19 cases in the area attributed to the highly contagious omicron variant.

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Residents are required to remain at home, with one family member permitted to venture out to buy food and other necessities every two days. All residents must undergo three rounds of mass testing, while non-essential businesses have been closed and transport links suspended.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam warned the territory’s wave of infections may not have peaked despite stringent controls on travel and business. It reported over 27,600 new confirmed cases.

“At this moment, we could not comfortably say that we have passed the peak,” Lam said at a news conference. “We’d rather take a very cautious stance.”

The new cases in mainland China included 134 in Jilin province in the northeast, where the industrial city of Changchun with a population of 9 million was put on lockdown Friday.

Changchun and the Jilin provincial capital, also called Jilin, are “still at the peak of community transmission,” the province’s party secretary, JIng Junhai, said in a statement.

On Saturday, the government announced Mayor Wang Lu of Jilin was replaced but gave no reason. The mayor of Jiutai district in Changchun also was dismissed, the Communist Party-owned Global Times newspaper reported.

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Yucheng in Shandong province also was on lockdown under China’s “zero tolerance” strategy, which aims to find and isolate every case.

A nationwide surge in cases has seen authorities close schools in Shanghai and lock down several northeastern cities, as over 10 provinces battle local outbreaks.