China announces on Wednesday a tightening of restrictions on foreign travel for its nationals.
This decision comes as the country faces a resumption of Covid-19 on its soil.
It has almost been eradicated on site since the spring of 2020. Life has largely returned to normal in China, despite the persistence of a few outbreaks of contamination, sporadic and until then very localized.
But, since the discovery last month in Nanjing (east) of new cases, this focus has quickly spread and now affects 17 provinces.
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To avoid further contamination, China will temporarily "stop issuing passports and other documents" necessary for travel abroad, said one of the officials of the immigration office, Liu Haitao.
The measure applies to Chinese nationals "unless there is a compelling reason," he told reporters.
The duration of the suspension is not known.
One point remains uncertain for the moment.
Are Chinese nationals already in possession of the required documents to travel abroad allowed or not?
Few cases, but a wide geographical distribution
China reported 71 new cases on Wednesday, the highest number of local infections on a day since January.
This increase in contamination remains, of course, still very limited compared to the figures recorded in other countries.
But this focus is, in terms of geographic extent, the largest in recent months in China.
In areas affected by the epidemic, authorities have ordered the suspension of public transport and taxis.
In Beijing, the capital, where three cases were reported on Wednesday, the authorities blocked the entrances to a residential area where one of the patients lives.
A year and a half after the start of the pandemic, the Covid-19 has also made its return to Wuhan (central China), the first city in the world to have reported at the end of 2019 the existence of what was then only 'a mysterious virus. Three new cases were confirmed Monday in the metropolis of 11 million souls, which is screening its inhabitants. Nanjing (east), the source of the current surge in cases, has already tested its 9 million inhabitants three times.