Photo taken inside Beijing West Railway Station on August 1st. Photo: CFP

Beijing has locked down six residential communities in its northwestern district of Haidian on Monday morning after finding one positive COVID-19 case within the area. The move came as the latest effort in curbing nationwide coronavirus spike that has spread to the country's capital in recent days. 

Guoxing Community along with five others adjacent to it in Haidian will enforce a closed-cycle management, after a resident in the community tested positive for coronavirus, the Beijing News Radio reported. 

Nucleic acid testing will be carried out on Monday and Tuesday among all households in the lockdown area, local medical workers told media. 

Disease control authorities in Beijing issued notices, urging residents not to leave the city and province unless necessary. It has also restricted tourists from medium- and high-risk areas for contracting COVID-19 to enter the city, Beijing Daily reported. 

Inbound flights, trains, and long-distance buses from regions where new cases have been found are suspended, including hard-hit cities like Nanjing, Zhengzhou and Zhangjiajie. Other routes coming in the capital city will also be strictly managed. 

Beijing reported two new infections on Sunday and one asymptomatic case related to the Zhangjiajie outbreak in Central China's Hunan Province, and genetic sequencing over the weekend showed they are the Delta variant linked to the mutated strain first found in Nanjing in the latest round of the epidemic spread.

Two residential compounds in Beijing's Fangshan district have been locked down since Sunday morning. Three residents from one family at the district tested positive for COVID-19 after returning from a trip to Zhangjiajie, local health authority announced on Sunday afternoon.  

The latest outbreaks have caused more than 300 infections in at least 27 cities in 18 provinces across the country, reports said.