The first passenger airline flights in a month took off Sunday from western China's Xi'an, as the government loosened travel curbs enforced following a coronavirus outbreak in the run-up to the Winter Olympics in Beijing next month.

According to the Xi'an Xianyang International Airport's website, seven planes took off, with four scheduled to arrive Sunday.

A new outbreak in Beijing has prompted authorities to conduct millions of tests and implement new measures two weeks before the Games, even as China lifted a month-long lockdown on the northern city of Xi'an and its 13 million residents on Monday.

Despite the decline in case numbers, pandemic controls have been tightened ahead of the Olympics, which require all participants to be tested prior to and following their arrival in Beijing.

Xi'an has been a pillar of the ruling Communist Party's "zero tolerance" approach to COVID-19, which requires lockdowns, travel restrictions, and mass testing whenever a case is discovered.

Xi'an is situated approximately 600 miles southwest of Beijing. Access to the city was suspended Dec. 22 because of an outbreak of the coronavirus delta variant.

Meanwhile, a Beijing district's 2 million residents have been ordered to submit to testing following a series of infections.

China reported 63 new confirmed infections nationwide in the 24 hours ending at midnight on Friday. This included 10 in Beijing and six in Tianjin, a neighboring port city.

Officially, China has a death toll of 4,635 out of 105,546 confirmed cases. Since Dec. 9, Xi'an has reported 2,052 cases. There were none reported on Friday.

Airline passengers wishing to depart from Xi'an must present a negative test conducted within the previous 48 hours, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. It stated that individuals from areas deemed to be at a high risk of infection were prohibited from entering the airport.

Additionally, the Beijing Municipal Health Commission announced Sunday that anyone who purchased medication for cough, fever or other illness within the previous two weeks would be required to submit to a COVID-19 test within 72 hours, according to the state-owned Global Times newspaper.

The Olympics are being held under stringent security measures designed to keep athletes, athletic personnel journalists, and officials separate from the locals. After arriving in China, athletes must be vaccinated or undergo quarantine.

Meanwhile, other outbreaks prompted the government to impose travel restrictions on a number of cities, including the port city of Tianjin, approximately an hour from Beijing.

The strict regulations are credited with preventing large-scale outbreaks across the country, and China has reported relatively few cases of the highly infectious omicron variant.