(Bloomberg) -- China's steel-making hub of Tangshan has imposed traffic controls on city roads to limit the transmission of Covid, a move that is disrupting transport and trading activities.
The northern city in Hebei province ordered emergency traffic controls on internal roads but not highways from Sunday midnight until further notice, state-owned China Central Television Station cited the local epidemic prevention and control leading agency as saying.
Tangshan, which is China's top steel-producing area and home to 7.7 million people, locked down a northern-based high-tech zone this weekend and rolled out a mass-testing plan in several districts. The city reported seven new Covid infections on Sunday.
Virus curbs have halted operations at several steel-trading and logistics companies, and staff numbers have been reduced because of quarantine requirements, limiting producers' capacity to maintain blast furnaces' basic operations, according to the Chinese news outlet Cailian.
China has stuck to its Covid Zero policy as it tries to combat its worst Covid outbreak in two years. Authorities have imposed more lockdowns over the past week than at any time in the pandemic, including in Langfang, a city in Hebei province, and in the province of Jilin.
Hebei had 21 new confirmed local Covid cases, including the seven in Tangshan, as of March 19. The province has reported 534 new asymptomatic cases, all in Langfang, data from the Hebei Heath Committee show.
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