China's northeastern city of Harbin will conduct a city-wide exercise to test its roughly 10 million people for Covid-19 from Monday, although it has had no recent cases, calling it a pre-emptive move ahead of the long Lunar New Year holiday, Reuters reports.

The city government said on its official WeChat account it had made the decision in view of how the week-long holiday, which officially starts on January 31, was a peak travel period for the country.

"Many cities recently reported cases of the local Omicron infection so prevention and control has to be very rigorous," the Harbin government added.