President Xi Jinping called for Hong Kong officials to take "all necessary measures” in getting the city’s virus outbreak under control, an unusually direct intervention that could pave the way for stricter measures and possibly a broader lockdown in the Asian financial hub.

The Chinese leader said Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s government should make stabilizing the COVID-19 situation its top priority, the state-run Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao newspapers reported Wednesday, without saying where they got the information.

The message, which leaves the city’s leaders even less room to deviate from China’s "COVID zero" policy, came a day after Lam said she had no plans for a citywide lock down, although she acknowledged the omicron variant outbreak had overwhelmed the government’s capacity to respond.

"Hong Kong’s government must take up the main responsibility to stabilize and control the pandemic as soon as possible as a mission that overrides everything, mobilize all available forces and resource and take all necessary measures to ensure the safety and health of Hong Kong’s citizens and the stability of Hong Kong’s society,” Xi said, according to Wen Wei Po. Xi ordered Vice Premier Han Zheng, who heads the Communist Party committee responsible for Hong Kong, to convey his instructions, the paper said.

The Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao newspapers are controlled by the Chinese government via its local Liaison Office. In a statement Wednesday, Lam said her government will follow Xi’s instructions, fully leverage support from China’s central government and bear overall responsibility for stabilizing the city’s COVID-19 outbreak.

"It is a way to force the Hong Kong government to contemplate if not a complete lockdown, some localized lockdown, even if in Hong Kong it will be particularly hard to implement because of the small size of people’s living spaces,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, research professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

After successfully preventing any widespread outbreaks for roughly two years, Hong Kong is grappling with its worst daily COVID-19 caseloads of the pandemic. The rising cases, made even more dangerous by low vaccination rates among the elderly, are also challenging a strict COVID zero approach to eliminating the local spread of the virus that Hong Kong has borrowed from mainland China.

"This message is a signal that Beijing is losing patience with the Hong Kong government regarding pandemic control,” said Vivian Zhan, an associate professor specializing in Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The runaway outbreak has prompted near-daily policy shifts as the city’s authorities struggle to boost capacity for the meticulous contact-tracing, isolation and quarantine measures that so far have largely kept the city safe — even while leaving the once-proud financial hub more cut off from the world. On Saturday, a delegation of Hong Kong officials traveled to the adjacent mainland city of Shenzhen to seek Beijing’s help in managing the outbreak.

"Xi has other private venues to talk to Carrie Lam, it doesn’t need to be in the paper,” said Dongshu Liu, an assistant professor specializing in Chinese politics at the City University of Hong Kong. "This message is for the public of Hong Kong. It’s showing the public the central government’s determination to continue tackling its COVID-19 outbreak, and that the national leader himself is working on the situation.”

China’s leaders have taken an increasingly hands-on role in managing the affairs of the former British colony, after a wave of pro-democracy protests culminated in widespread unrest in 2019. Since then, Beijing has handed down a series of measures to bring Hong Kong under tighter control, enacting a sweeping national security law that carries sentences as long as life in prison and an election overhaul that has prevented most opposition activists from seeking office.

"Xi is encouraging stronger action and expressing frustration at the current explosion of infections in Hong Kong,” said Michael Davis, a professor of law and international affairs at O.P. Jindal Global University in India and a former law professor at the University of Hong Kong. "Xi will presumably be pushing for a lockdown in Hong Kong comparable to what has been done in other mainland cities, while Carrie Lam has so far only ordered local lockdowns.”