Beijing on Friday started a drive to test two million people in 48 hours in an attempt to stem a new local cluster of cases in the Bongcheng and Xicheng districts of the city.

The cases are reportedly believed to be linked to a more contagious novel coronavirus variant.

The two districts include Tiananmen Square and several government ministry offices, with close two million people residing there.

According to AFP, one testing line in the district stretched over 400 metres with around a thousand people waiting to be tested.

“I received the notification this morning and thought I’d come during lunch hour; but there are so many people here in line,” one Dongcheng resident said, AFP reported. 

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 Testing is planned to be completed by Saturday, especially with the Lunar New Year holiday around the corner. A time when millions travel across the country and families get together, the holiday poses a potential risk for an outbreak in the capital city.

Locals have begun complaining on social media about the long wait times amid freezing temperature.

“I queued for three hours and finally got tested,” one user said on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform.

A partial lockdown is already in place in Beijing’s southern Daxing district, where all 1.6 million residents have been ordered to remain indoors and all the roads into and outside of the district have been sealed.

Beijing’s testing drive comes amid China recording its highest number of cases in nearly a year, after the novel coronavirus was first detected in the central city of Wuhan back in 2019.

According to officials,  some of the cases detected in Beijing are linked to the more contagious variant of the virus, that was recently discovered.

China reported 103 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, including six cases in Shanghai and three in Beijing.

The majority of cases were in the country’s northeast.