Parts of Tibet are running mass Covid-19 testing, including the Chinese autonomous region's two largest cities, to fight a rare flare-up, while clusters were growing in tropical Hainan and in Xinjiang in China's west.
Subvariants of the highly transmissible Omicron are challenging China's strategy of swiftly blocking the spread of each nascent cluster.
Regions that have seen relatively few cases for more than two years now battling outbreaks, raising the risk of persistent tight restrictions as the economy weakens.
Mainland China reported 828 new domestically transmitted cases for yesterday, official data showed today. Over 70% of those cases were found in Hainan, one of the country's most popular tourist destinations, as well as Xinjiang, while the rest were reported across more than a dozen provinces and regions.