By HUIZHONG WU | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

TAIPEI, Tai­wan (AP) — Chi­na banned most peo­ple from leav­ing a coro­n­avirus-hit north-east­ern province and mo­bi­lized mil­i­tary re­servists Mon­day as the fast-spread­ing “stealth omi­cron” vari­ant fu­els the coun­try’s biggest out­break since the start of the pan­dem­ic two years ago.

The Na­tion­al Health Com­mis­sion re­port­ed 1,337 lo­cal­ly trans­mit­ted cas­es in the lat­est 24-hour pe­ri­od, in­clud­ing 895 in the in­dus­tri­al province of Jilin. A gov­ern­ment no­tice said that po­lice per­mis­sion would be re­quired for peo­ple to leave the area or trav­el from one city to an­oth­er.

The hard-hit province sent 7,000 re­servists to help with the re­sponse, from keep­ing or­der and reg­is­ter­ing peo­ple at test­ing cen­tres to us­ing drones to car­ry out aer­i­al spray­ing and dis­in­fec­tion, state broad­cast­er CCTV re­port­ed.

Hun­dreds of cas­es were re­port­ed in oth­er provinces and cities along Chi­na’s east coast and in­land as well. Bei­jing, which had six news cas­es, and Shang­hai, with 41, locked down res­i­den­tial and of­fice build­ings where in­fect­ed peo­ple had been found.

“Every day when I go to work, I wor­ry that if our of­fice build­ing will sud­den­ly be locked down then I won’t be able to get home, so I have bought a sleep­ing bag and stored some fast food in the of­fice in ad­vance, just in case,” said Yi­meng Li, a Shang­hai res­i­dent.

While main­land Chi­na’s num­bers are small com­pared to many oth­er coun­tries, and even the se­mi-au­tonomous city of Hong Kong, they are the high­est since COVID-19 killed thou­sands in the cen­tral city of Wuhan in ear­ly 2020. No deaths have been re­port­ed in the lat­est out­breaks.

Hong Kong on Mon­day re­port­ed 26,908 new cas­es and 249 deaths in its lat­est 24-hour pe­ri­od. The city counts its cas­es dif­fer­ent­ly than the main­land, com­bin­ing both rapid anti­gen tests and PCR test re­sults.

The city’s leader, Car­rie Lam, said au­thor­i­ties would not tight­en pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions for now. “I have to con­sid­er whether the pub­lic, whether the peo­ple would ac­cept fur­ther mea­sures,” she said at a press brief­ing.

Main­land Chi­na has seen rel­a­tive­ly few in­fec­tions since the ini­tial Wuhan out­break as the gov­ern­ment has held fast to its ze­ro-tol­er­ance strat­e­gy, which is fo­cused on stop­ping trans­mis­sion of the coro­n­avirus by re­ly­ing on strict lock­downs and manda­to­ry quar­an­tines for any­one who has come in­to con­tact with a pos­i­tive case.

The gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed it will con­tin­ue to stick to its strat­e­gy of stop­ping trans­mis­sion for the time be­ing.

Of­fi­cials on Sun­day locked down the south­ern city of Shen­zhen, which has 17.5 mil­lion peo­ple and is a ma­jor tech and fi­nance hub that bor­ders Hong Kong. That fol­lowed the lock­down of Changchun, home to 9 mil­lion peo­ple in Jilin province, start­ing last Fri­day.

On Mon­day, Zhang Wen­hong, a promi­nent in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­pert at a hos­pi­tal af­fil­i­at­ed with Shang­hai’s Fu­dan Uni­ver­si­ty not­ed in an es­say for Chi­na’s busi­ness out­let Caix­in, that the num­bers for the main­land were still in the be­gin­ning stages of an “ex­po­nen­tial rise.”

Chi­na’s vast pas­sen­ger rail net­work said it would cut ser­vice sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and both Chi­na Rail­way and air­lines said they would of­fer free re­funds to peo­ple who had al­ready bought tick­ets. Shang­hai sus­pend­ed bus ser­vice to oth­er cities and provinces.

Shang­hai has record­ed 713 cas­es in March, of which 632 are asymp­to­matic cas­es. Chi­na counts pos­i­tive and asymp­to­matic cas­es sep­a­rate­ly in its na­tion­al num­bers. Schools in Chi­na’s largest city have switched to re­mote learn­ing.

In Bei­jing, sev­er­al build­ings were sealed off over the week­end. Res­i­dents said they were will­ing to fol­low the ze­ro-tol­er­ance poli­cies de­spite any per­son­al im­pact.

“I think on­ly when the epi­dem­ic is to­tal­ly wiped out can we ease up,” said Tong Xin, 38, a shop own­er in the Silk Mar­ket, a tourist-ori­ent­ed mall in the Chi­nese cap­i­tal.

Much of the cur­rent out­break across Chi­nese cities is be­ing dri­ven by the vari­ant com­mon­ly known as “stealth omi­cron,” or the B.A.2 lin­eage of the omi­cron vari­ant, Zhang not­ed. Ear­ly re­search sug­gests it spreads faster than the orig­i­nal omi­cron, which it­self spread faster than the orig­i­nal virus and oth­er vari­ants.

“But if our coun­try opens up quick­ly now, it will cause a large num­ber of in­fec­tions in peo­ple in a short pe­ri­od of time,” Zhang wrote Mon­day. “No mat­ter how low the death rate is, it will still cause a run on med­ical re­sources and a short term shock to so­cial life, caus­ing ir­repara­ble harm to fam­i­lies and so­ci­ety.”

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press video pro­duc­er Olivia Zhang in Bei­jing and re­searcher Chen Si con­tributed to this re­port from Shang­hai.