JILIN (NYTIMES)In Shulan, a city in China's north-east, the streets are eerily quiet, devoid of taxis and buses. Apartment complexes have been sealed off, confining residents inside. Teams of government workers go door to door rounding up sick people as part of what they call a "wartime" campaign.
As Chinese authorities confront scattered outbreaks of the coronavirus in the country's north-east, they are turning to several of the same strict lockdown measures that were a hallmark of the effort four months ago to stamp out the epidemic in the central city of Wuhan.
Residents described the atmosphere as tense. Li Ping, who works at a real estate company in Shulan, population 600,000, stocked up on meat, eggs and noodles as she prepared for the lockdown.
"The government's controls now are very strict," she said. "As long as we obey and not go out, it will be all right."
The forceful response reflects fears among China's leaders about the potential for a fresh wave of infections as factories, schools and restaurants reopen across much of the country and the government touts its success in fighting the virus on the global stage. It also offers a preview of what governments around the world will likely face in the coming months as they work to restart their economies.
The latest outbreak is concentrated in Jilin, a north-eastern province of 27 million people that sits near China's borders with Russia and North Korea. Jilin has reported a small outbreak of about 130 cases and two deaths, however, experts there have warned of the threat of a "big explosion".
Officials have already mobilised police and Communist Party groups to make sure residents comply with the lockdown. Tens of thousands of people are being tested for the virus and thousands rounded up into hospitals for quarantine. The central government has signalled its displeasure about the outbreak, dismissing five local officials and sending top leaders to the province to conduct inspections.
Authorities have also imposed a lockdown on parts of Jilin city, a manufacturing base, bringing factories to a standstill and quieting streets. In some areas, residents are allowed to leave their homes only once every two days, and for a maximum of two hours, to shop for groceries. The strictest measures are probably affecting more than 200,000 people in the city.
"We're doing what is necessary to control and prevent the disease, and to isolate those who need to be isolated," said Song Jing, a government worker in Shulan who is helping to organize widespread testing for residents.
The outbreak points to the persistence of the virus in China despite the punishing restrictions imposed to contain it, including a 76-day lockdown in Wuhan, the central city where the virus first emerged in December. The coronavirus has killed at least 4,600 people in China, although that official count is considered an underestimate.
"The possibility of another wave is clearly there," said David Hui, director of the Stanley Ho Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "China doesn't want to take any chances."
In China, the ruling Communist Party's swift use of heavy-handed lockdown measures in Jilin also shows its resolve to declare victory in what China's top leader, Xi Jinping, has described as a "people's war" against the virus.
Officials are also working to contain small outbreaks elsewhere, including in Wuhan, where the government is leading a campaign to test all of the city's 11 million residents after a smattering of new cases.
A meeting of China's national legislature begins in Beijing on Friday, and Xi appears eager to project strength in the face of the uncertainty posed by the pandemic.
The coronavirus outbreak in Jilin has unnerved the public in part because authorities have struggled to trace its origins.
Officials have tied several cases in the northeast to Chinese nationals who had recently returned from Russia. However, several of the recent cases involve people who had not traveled outside the country.
One of the first reported clusters in Jilin was traced to a 45-year-old woman in Shulan who washed clothes at a police bureau and had not been abroad recently. Around a dozen other cases were afterwards linked to the woman. Elsewhere, officials found that a man in Jilin city infected with the coronavirus had attended a large wedding in early May, raising fears of a bigger outbreak.
Adding to the difficulties, Chinese medical experts say the virus is displaying slightly different characteristics in Jilin, as well as in other northeastern provinces where cases have recently appeared, including Heilongjiang.
Patients are taking longer than the typical one to two weeks to show symptoms of the illness after being infected, an expert with the National Health Commission, Qiu Haibo, told the state-run broadcaster this week, and they are carrying the virus for a longer period of time.