New curbs in China’s Xinjiang after spike in symptomless Covid-19 cases

All the positive results were traced to the Shufu county of Kashgar prefecture where a 17-year-old girl had tested positive over the weekend.

The remote Kashgar area of China’s Xinjiang region reported 164 asymptomatic Covid-19 cases until Monday night, as a rapid mass testing campaign for over 4.75 million people is underway.

People wearing a face mask to help curb the spread of the coronavirus walk by a construction site in Beijing on Monday. Schools and kindergartens have been suspended and communities are on lockdown in Kashgar, a city in China's northwest Xinjiang region, after a spike in asymptomatic cases. (AP)

Until Monday afternoon, 4.47 million samples and over 2.13 million test results have been returned, state media reported.

All the positive results were traced to the Shufu county of Kashgar prefecture where a 17-year-old girl had tested positive over the weekend.

The first cluster of tests were carried out at a textile factory where the parents of the teenager worked.

“The reason that all reported cases are asymptomatic carriers of the virus as of now is that we have launched prompt and timely tests to detect patients earlier. Since these patients are at an early stage of infection, they exhibit no symptoms,” Wang Xijiang, deputy director of Kashgar’s disease control and prevention centre was quoted by state-controlled China Daily newspaper as saying.

China does not count asymptomatic cases as confirmed cases of Covid-19. Even though the infected – who do not show symptoms – can spread the disease, asymptomatic patients are counted separately.

Local authorities, meanwhile, have imposed travel restrictions including the cancellation of some flights.

Schools have been ordered shut to avoid cross-infection and residents have been asked to stay in their neighbourhoods to allow medical staff to carry out nucleic acid tests.

In July, the Chinese government had declared a “wartime state” in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, after a spike in locally transmitted cases of coronavirus.

Separately, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Tuesday that 50 new asymptomatic cases, including 24 arriving from outside the mainland, were reported for Monday.

The commission said in its daily report that 16 confirmed cases arriving from outside the mainland were also reported on the same day.

Of the new imported cases, three each were reported in Shanghai and Shaanxi, two each in Hebei and Sichuan, and one each in Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Fujian, Shandong and Guangdong, official news agency Xinhua quoted the NHC as saying.

“As of Monday, the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases on the mainland had reached 85,826. Of them, 264 patients were still being treated, including four in severe condition,” the report said.

The commission said 4,634 people had died of the disease on the mainland.

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