A town in China’s southern Guangdong province clamped down on the movement of people on Tuesday, banning most incoming traffic and stopping nearly all residents from leaving after two domestic travellers tested positive for the coronavirus early that morning. A woman and a man in their 30s had travelled together to the town of Dalang in Dongguan from Shenzhen airport on December 4. They were later identified as asymptomatic patients during Covid-19 testing targeting travellers who had recently arrived in Dongguan, the city’s anti-epidemic task force said. China’s “ dynamic zero-Covid strategy ” aims to control outbreaks as quickly as possible through mass testing and restrictions on movement and transport. However, infections are still breaking out in the country in waves, some caused by cases seeping in from border regions. “During traffic control, all vehicles are prohibited from entering Dalang except those with permits related to epidemic control, emergency rescue, nucleic acid sampling and the delivery of necessities,” Dongguan’s anti-epidemic task force said. China detects first Omicron case – overseas returnee in Tianjin “People can only enter but not leave. If they need to leave or enter for medical or work reasons, they must carry proof of a negative test obtained within the previous 48 hours.” The 33-year-old man visited four hotels, two karaoke boxes and six restaurants in his week’s stay in Dalang, which is home to 557,000 people. The woman, 30, had been to restaurants, a bubble tea shop, a nail salon and a foot massage parlour. Sixty-five other passengers were on the pair’s flight to Shenzhen from Xian in northwestern Shaanxi province. Of these, 42 remained in Shenzhen , a Chinese official told the South China Morning Post on condition of anonymity. Authorities in Dalang had identified 199 close contacts of the pair and launched mass testing by Tuesday morning, Dongguan officials said, with no positive samples returned as yet. The neighbouring towns of Dongkeng, Liaobu and Changping, with a combined population of 1.3 million, had also launched mass testing. On Tuesday, the National Health Commission reported 51 new local symptomatic cases. All but seven were identified in the coastal province of Zhejiang, where Shaoxing reported 38 cases to continue its four-day streak as the most affected city in the country. Four community asymptomatic cases – all from Qiqihar in Heilongjiang province – were also reported. Don’t go home for the Lunar New Year, Chinese workers urged The Dongguan cases were excluded from the commission’s daily case report because they fell outside the reporting time period. China also reported 36 imported cases, of which 25 were symptomatic. Of 9.5 million samples collected in Shaoxing, Ningbo and Hangzhou, 7.2 million, or 75 per cent, had so far returned negative results for the coronavirus, Zhejiang health authorities said on Monday. Assessment was continuing on the rest of the samples. More than 540,000 people had been placed under isolation in the province of 64 million, after the first case in the present wave was identified on December 7. That person had travelled from Shanghai to Shaoxing for a funeral, where about 20 other attendees were later found to have Covid-19. Among them was a resident of Hangzhou, who brought the virus back to that city. In Shaoxing, three other villages surrounding the small village of Jingkou had been locked down, leaving it with only one exit point on its south side, the Shaoxing Evening News reported on Monday. “Community volunteers have been stationed at five [exit] points for 24-hour surveillance, to prevent people from leaving without authorisation,” village chief Yu Jiangang said.