XI’AN city in north-west China’s Shaanxi province has halted the community spread of Covid-19 a month after the resurgence of the virus.

The success of containment measures including mass testing and city-level lockdown are seen as a vindication of China’s zero-Covid policy.

The highly contagious delta variant is believed to have arrived in the city, which has a population of 13 million and is one of the ancient capitals of China, on an inbound flight on December 4.

The number of cases in the popular tourist destination, home to the famous terracotta warriors retrieved from the tomb of China’s first emperor Qin Shihuang, rose by more than 150 a day for a week in late December, with the virus spreading to other cities and provinces.

But now the spread has been cut off almost entirely due to the “heroic efforts” of both health workers and the local population.

More than 400 spots were established in the city to allow centralised quarantines, with a total of 45,760 people isolating under the measures.

"The quarantined personnel have overcome the inconvenience to themselves and their families for the safety of all. They are also heroes," Xi’an Vice-Mayor Xu Mingfei said.

Many of those infected did not show symptoms and so were unaware they were carrying the disease, allowing it to spread rapidly in the community.

Health officials launched mass nucleic acid testing, which enabled them to quickly identify the source of the infections and place areas under quarantine.

A lockdown was imposed on December 23 on the city and surrounding villages.

Nearly 1,900 people have tested positive since December, the worst outbreak since coronavirus was first detected in China two years ago.

But cases began to drop at the start of the year with the numbers now in double digits, according to Mr Xu.

The containment measures have been criticised in the Western media with scare stories of food shortages and describing people held prisoners in their own homes.

But head of the National Health Commission’s Covid-19 task forces Liang Wannian said the country’s dynamic zero-infections policy,  launched in August, was “the best option and the guiding principle of China’s control work.”

Chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control & Prevention Wu Zunyou said the policy has had “significant results.”

“Most regions on the Chinese mainland are free of Covid-19 infections,” he said, adding that new cases are mainly detected among incoming passengers or overseas cargo.

Without the measures, Mr Wu said, it’s estimated that China would have experienced 47.8 million infections and 950,000 Covid-related deaths, based on global averages.

Just 67 deaths from the virus were recorded in China last year, with fewer than 5,000 in total since the outbreak began.