Citizens in Jilin Province receive nucleic acid testing on March 9, 2022. Photo: VCG

Changchun, capital of Northeast China's Jilin Province will conduct three rounds of city-wide nucleic acid testing for COVID-19 starting from Friday and the city has carried out closed-loop management to ensure each resident undergoes nucleic acid testing.

Except for those people involved in epidemic prevention, all working staff from administrative institutions in Changchun will work at home; all enterprises except some certain designated firms providing public services to ensure people's livelihood will suspend operation, the city authorities said on Friday.  

With the exception of supermarkets, pharmacies and medical institutions with special needs to ensure the basic needs of residents, all other stores will be suspended; schools will be closed and buses, taxis and subways will be suspended, according to the city authorities.  

"My daughter started to take classes online since Wednesday, and the closed-loop management hasn't so far brought too much impact on our daily life," a senior high school student's mother surnamed Yan, told the Global Times on Friday. 

In Changchun, one person in each family can go out every two days to buy necessary supplies. The closed-loop management period will be lifted when a decision is made in the near future.

Besides Changchun, this wave of epidemic also spread into other cities in Jilin, which reported 98 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 148 local asymptomatic infections on Friday.

Community transmission has occurred in the cities of Jilin and Changchun, and the number of infected persons detected by screening will continue to increase rapidly during a short period of time, according to media reports.

The governor of Jilin Province, Han Jun, who had attended the two sessions in Beijing, returned to the province earlier than scheduled to guide epidemic prevention and control.

From March 1 to 1 pm Friday, Jilin Province reported 526 local COVID-19 confirmed cases, including 396 in the city of Jilin and 78 in Changchun; the province also reported 590 local asymptomatic infections, the authorities said at Friday's press briefing.

The wave of epidemic in the province spread via Omicron strains based on genome sequencing, according to the authorities. The epidemic was imported to the province in late February and started to spread locally. 

It is difficult to detect the infection in the early stage as the clinical symptoms of the infected people amid the outbreak are not obvious, mainly asymptomatic or showing mild symptoms. 

Currently, asymptomatic cases account for 52.87 percent of the total cases reported in Jilin Province. Of the confirmed cases, 521 were mild and five were ordinary cases; the virus can only be detected in individual infected persons after repeated nucleic acid tests, according to the authorities. 

Jilin has set up special working teams in universities to strengthen campus management over epidemic control and nucleic acid testing to contain the epidemic spread on campuses in the shortest time.

A top official from Jilin Agricultural Science and Technology University was sacked on Thursday after a cluster of infections was detected in the campus. 

Han also went to the university to determine an overall plan and schedule of resources to curb the virus. As of 8:05 Friday, a total of 6,556 students from the university have been transferred. Meanwhile, six provincial-level special supervision working groups have been established to carry out random inspections.