China on Tuesday reported 5,280 new Covid-19 cases – the highest daily count since the start of the pandemic in January 2020, Agence France-Presse reported. At least 10 cities and counties in China have been locked down because of the latest surge in the Covid-19 cases, driven by the Omicron variant of the virus.

Nearly three crore people were locked down across China on Tuesday.

The northeastern province of Jilin has been worst-hit, Reuters reported. Of the 5,280 new cases reported on Tuesday, 3,000 were detected in Jilin, according to Agence France-Presse.

On Monday too, 90% of the new symptomatic cases in China were found in Jilin. Authorities have imposed a travel ban on more than 2.4 crore people living in the region. Those who must travel needed to notify the local police, the provincial government said in a statement.

On Saturday, the mayor of Jilin city, Wang Lu, had been dismissed, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece Global Times reported. China’s Health Commission has said that the “city is still in the process of rapid increase” of confirmed cases.

Local authorities have been conducting multiple rounds of testing and building makeshift hospitals to contain the outbreak, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

On Sunday, China had also imposed a week-long lockdown in Shenzen, a city with a population of 1.75 crore. Globally, 45.98 crore people have been infected with the virus, of which 60,45,820 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.