That four more places in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, were classified as intermediate risk regions on Sunday indicates the latest spate of novel coronavirus infections that emerged in Guangzhou late last month has yet to come to its turning point.

Since the first locally transmitted case was reported in Liwan district of the city on May 21, a total of 94 cases have been reported in Guangzhou, along with 11 related cases in neighboring Foshan and Maoming as of Sunday morning. So far, both of the two high risk regions and eight out of the 12 intermediate risk regions in the country are in Guangzhou.

That the virus has spread rapidly to multiple cities in a short time due to the close connections among cities in the Pearl River Delta cluster and the more easily transmissible new strains of the virus highlights that people cannot afford to relax their guard, as the virus will take any opportunity offered to launch a new offensive.

Two separate transmission chains have been verified in the province, one in Guangzhou, which is a variant that emerged in India and one in neighboring Shenzhen — where a total of 15 local cases had been reported from May 21 to June 1 — which is the strain first identified in the United Kingdom.

With the Dragon Boat Festival holiday to be held from Saturday to Monday, the epidemic prevention and control work in Guangdong must be diligently carried out so as to prevent the chains of transmission extending to other parts of the country.

Although Indian variants of the virus had been found in imported infections before, Guangzhou represents the first toehold that a variant from India has gained in the country, which makes the city the first battlefield for the country to fight against the virus' most infectious variant so far.

With the most advanced technology and facilities, the most efficient governance system and the most abundant supply of essential medical supplies, that the most developed region of the country has not yet cut the transmission chains of the virus over more than half a month — a period of time during which the previous outbreaks in Dalian, Beijing and other Chinese cities were subdued — speaks volumes about the urgency of the situation.

The de facto lockdown Guangzhou enforced from Monday signals that the normalization of epidemic prevention and control work at home is entering a new phase. That should ring the alarm bell for local governments that they must always be in a battle-ready state.

Guangzhou and other cities in the delta region are doing all they can to try and gain an upper hand in their struggle to tame the virus, and in doing so, accumulating firsthand experience for the whole country to deal with the new and future variants.

It is hoped that they can finish their vaccination programs as soon as possible to provide the people with more protection, and bring the virus to heel at an early date.