SHANGHAI: China reported a slight drop in new COVID-19 cases on Saturday after authorities urged people to stay home over the weekend as Beijing battled the outbreak and restaurants and other businesses closed in several cities.

Authorities recently tried to downplay the effects of their strict zero-Covid policy, which is crippling the world's second-largest economy and fueling anger and resentment as the number of cases rose to its highest level since April. Anger is provoking.

Chaoyang, Beijing's main diplomatic and business district, has seen many businesses closed or announce reduced hours of operation.

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The owner of a restaurant in Sanlitun, the center of the city's nightlife, claimed authorities had instructed him and other businesses in the area to close for three days starting Saturday.

An important office building in nearby Dongcheng District announced that Chaoyang residents should not report for work starting Monday and that staffing levels would be reduced by 30 percent.

For those entering from other provinces, the peripheral Beijing districts of Fengshan and Huirou have announced additional testing requirements.

Beijing reported 79 symptomatic and 436 asymptomatic cases on Friday, down from 100 symptomatic and 366 asymptomatic cases a day earlier, according to government data.

Beijing officials are on high alert in an effort to prevent an outbreak of multiple Omicron variants from spreading in the capital.
At a news conference, Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director of Beijing's municipal center for disease control and prevention, said the number of cases in each district of the capital was still rising.

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 Saturday at 3 p.m. (0700 GMT), the city had recorded 395 confirmed cases, of which 56 came from non-quarantined individuals.

Authorities reported 24,263 domestically transmitted cases per day across the country, down from 25,129 a day earlier, of whom 2,055 showed symptoms and 22,208 did not.

It is approaching a peak when the government shut down Shanghai, China's financial center and largest city, earlier this year.

However, this time, cases are spread across multiple cities, with officials weighing the pros and cons of relaxing rules that have hurt businesses.

Guangzhou, a southern city of about 19 million people, reported 269 new cases of the domestically transmitted disease with symptoms and 8,444 without symptoms, 255 cases with symptoms and 8,989 without symptoms, according to officials.

To accommodate the growing number of cases, Guangzhou officials recently announced they would build facilities with more than 250,000 hospital beds. Residents protested this week in defiance of strict lockdown rules.

Zhengzhou, a major manufacturing hub, reported 182 new symptomatic locally transmitted COVID-19 infections and 1,385 asymptomatic cases, up from 107 symptomatic and 1,556 asymptomatic cases a day earlier, according to government data.

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Some workers at the Foxconn-run factory that makes Apple iPhones fled the city because of the lockdown. In response, officials have offered low-level employees and locals cash bonuses on top of their wages if they continue to work on the assembly line.