Coronavirus: Xinjiang city must brave ‘wartime conditions’ to stop Covid-19
- Vice-premier emphasises need for disease tracking and strict quarantine during a visit to Kashgar and Kizilsu Kyrgyz autonomous region
- Xinjiang officials have ruled out any link between clusters in Kashgar last month and cases in Urumqi in July
Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan said counties in Xinjiang should keep up with “wartime conditions” and take resolute measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
“The cluster cases in Kashgar were discovered early with a timely emergency response mechanism and decisive measures, so the epidemic is manageable,” Sun said, adding that the situation was still grim as most of the infected cases were discovered in village factories with confined spaces.
Kashgar, which is home to 700,000 people, started a fourth round of Covid-19 tests on Wednesday after the latest outbreak was reported last month.
The neighbouring Kizilsu Kyrgyz autonomous prefecture also carried out two rounds of mass testing in October and detected 15 cases in Aktau county. Aktau began testing its 220,000 residents on Tuesday for the fourth time.