but despite border closures, authorities there are now fighting a growing local covid outbreak. officials in the city of xi an reported 175 new infections on monday. while small compared to other countries, that s the highest daily count in any chinese city since march of 2020. cnn s steven jiang has been following all of this and he joins us now from beijing. this is where all of this started, right? china with their strict lockdowns. at this point, it s 175 cases, but is this worrying authorities at this point because the case count for china is quite high? reporter: for china for sure but they re also pointing to the fast spread of the omicron variant outside of chinese borders to further justify their continued insistence on sticking to the zero covid policy, which is why authorities in xi an are doing what their counterparts in other regions of this country have done in the past whenever a new locally transmitted cases