China recorded its highest COVID tally in 21 months on Sunday, with a huge chunk of infections driven by the latest outbreak in Xi’an, the latest hotspot of the country, according to media reports.

The city of Xian, which has been lockdown for nearly four days, reported 155 cases that indicated community transmission on Saturday. Nearly half the cases were detected a day before.

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With the Winter Olympic games around the corner, the national tally of China reached 158, the highest since early 2020, according to reports from Reuters.

The city with about 13 million residents reported 485 symptomatic COVID cases between December 9 and 25th, forcing a strict lockdown with multiple other restrictions. The curbs were imposed in line with the country’s COVID containment policy.

The spike in coronavirus cases has not been linked to the detection of the omicron variant and reportedly did not cause any deaths, leaving the national tally at 4,636. Mainland China had 101,077 confirmed cases as of December 25.

The restrictions in the northeastern city of Xi’an took effect at midnight Wednesday, with no word on when they might be lifted. They are some of the harshest since China imposed a strict lockdown last year on more than 11 million people in and around the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019.

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One person from each household will be allowed out every two days to buy household necessities, a government order said. Other family members were required to stay at home, although the rule was not being rigorously enforced, according to social media posts. People who happened to be staying in hotels became stuck, according to reports from Associated Press.

China has also been dealing with a substantial coronavirus outbreak in several cities in the eastern province of Zhejiang near Shanghai, although isolation measures there have been more narrowly targeted.

(With AP inputs)