BEIJING — Another major Chinese city has tightened Covid restrictions as the country struggles to contain a nationwide outbreak stretching from Shanghai in the southeast to the northern provinces.

Guangzhou, a southern Chinese city, has shifted to online learning and closed classes in person at its elementary and middle school. A city announcement made the following weekend that these measures would last no less than a week.

According to municipal authorities, locals shouldn’t leave the city except for emergencies. To do this, they would need to have a negative virus testing within the past 48 hours.

Guangzhou — capital of Guangdong, a manufacturing-heavy province — reported 27 new Covid cases for Sunday, including 9 without symptoms. The National Health Commission reported that this number is up from the 11 cases reported one day before.

Shanghai saw a record 914 cases with symptoms, and 25173 without. Authorities reported Saturday 1,006 cases of symptoms and 23,937 without.

It is home to the majority of new Covid cases on mainland China. Shanghai remains in lockdown — with most people forced to stay in their apartments and get food by delivery — about a week after a two-part shutdownOriginally, it was meant to end.

Shanghai had shifted elementary and middle schools to online learningIt was March 12, 2012, exactly one month ago. In the name of mass-virus testing, the lockdown went into two stages on March 28.

Last week saw another round of mass tests in all eleven Guangzhou cities. On Saturday, the city announced that it was in the process to transform an expo center into temporary hospitals.

This latest outbreak of Covid cases is caused by the transmissible Omicron variant. It marks the most severe Covid epidemic on the continent since the first phase of the pandemic, which began in 2020.

Firma that manufactures electric cars NioCovid had caused suppliers to Jilin, Shanghai, and Jiangsu to stop production. The company announced that it would suspend production and delay delivery.

A Morgan Stanley survey found that at the start of this month, about 31% of Chinese people were worried they wouldn’t be able to pay debt or rent — several percentage points higher than the March to May 2020 period.

Survey results showed that worries about job loss rose back to mid-March 2020 levels, though they were slightly lower than the April highs.

Morgan Stanley analysts expect no significant change to China’s zero Covid policy after October and November. The analysts lowered their annual GDP projection to 4.6% on March 31 from 5.1%.

On the same day Citi analysts raised their China GDP forecast to 5.0% from 4.7%Based on Covid’s effect on the economy, more stimulus would be required.

After battling a spike in Covid cases since late February, the northern province of Jilin — home to many automobile factories — has started to see a leveling out. There are now several hundred new Covid cases per day in Jilin, down from over 1,000 to 2,000 per day (including asymptomatic)

Beijing, China’s capital, did not report any new cases of locally transmitted disease for Sunday. Hebei, a neighboring province, reported 100 cases. All were symptomatic.

Additional major cities in the country included Xi’an, Chengdu (central China) and Suzhou and Nanjing near the coast. They each reported fewer than 10 cases of symptoms on Sunday.