Running the stairwells
China's ruling Communist Party has launched a campaign featuring Olympic athletes to demonstrate how people can stay fit while spending endless days stuck inside.
Tables, chairs and even door frames can all be used in one form or another to help exercise, according to one online pamphlet.
Schools are shut and children are not exempt. They have been ordered by education authorities not to simply lounge about playing computer games and fiddling with their phones.
"In addition to letting children help parents do some chores within their ability, they must get creative at home," government expert Zhao Wenhua told a press conference.
"For example, walking and running on the spot, skipping, push-ups, sit-ups and so on."
Some people have turned to technology, using apps on their smartphones that show how to work out without equipment and sharing the results with their friends.
Bilibili, a popular video-sharing platform, says views of fitness-related content jumped nearly 50 percent in the period January 23 to February 5 compared to the two weeks before.
Peter Gardner, a 61-year-old Briton hunkered down in the snow-covered northeast city of Tianjin, prefers more traditional methods.
Like hundreds of millions of others, his movements have been severely restricted by the Chinese authorities in an attempt to stop the deadly virus spreading.
Gardner, an operations manager for an American firm, said he is allowed out of his block of flats for only 30 minutes in the daytime to stock up on essentials.
To make up for the lack of exercise, he twice runs up and down the emergency stairwell of his 17-floor apartment tower three times a day.
"It's good in some ways," said Gardner, whose family have temporarily left China, leaving him with their two guinea pigs for company.
"I can't go out for beers and I've lost about three-quarters of a kilo," he said by telephone.
"There are no places to eat, nowhere to go and I'm eating simply, because I can't buy the stuff I want."