A northeastern Chinese city of nine million people was ordered to lockdown on Friday, as authorities scramble to halt a fresh Covid-19 outbreak that has pushed nationwide case counts to their highest in two years, IgbereTV reports.

Changchun, the capital of Jilin province and an important industrial base, has ordered residents to work from home. One person will be allowed out every two days to buy “daily necessities”, and said it would institute mass testing.

After the highly transmissible Omicron variant broke through China’s defences, Covid cases across the country soared past the 1,000 mark this week for the first time since the pandemic’s early days in 2020, from less than 100 just three weeks ago.

There were 1,369 cases across more than a dozen provinces, according to the latest daily official count released earlier Friday