World News | Kashgar in China's Xinjiang Province Reports 183 COVID-19 Cases After Testing All 4.74 Mn Residents

Beijing, Oct 27 (PTI) The Kashgar prefecture in China's Xinjiang province has reported 183 coronavirus cases after the completion of COVID-19 tests for all 4.74 million residents in the region on Tuesday.

Kashgar recorded five confirmed COVID-19 cases and 178 asymptomatic ones, all in Shufu County, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

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The local health authorities said an epidemiological survey for virus tracing is still underway and the medical expert team has so far ruled out a connection between Kashgar and the epidemic in Urumqi in July.

On October 24, a 17-year-old female villager from Kashgar's Shufu County was confirmed as an asymptomatic carrier of the virus during a routine nucleic acid testing.

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The detection led to mass testing across the prefecture, and over 130 people tested positive the following day, all related to a local factory where the parents of the female villager work.

Li Linyu, the local head of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), told the media that investigations have shown that the new cases have no relation to the cluster in the regional capital of Urumqi in July and source tracing for the new cases in Shufu is underway.

The sudden spike in coronavirus infections in Kashi prefecture in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region brought the region back to a quasi lockdown mode, state-run Global Times reported.

In the wake of the epidemic outbreaks in Beijing, Qingdao as well as Urumqi, Kashgar is taking more precise epidemic response measures in the prevention and control work to minimise the impact of the outbreak on local people, the report said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)