Coronavirus: cases in Xian may be slowing but anywhere in China could be next, says health expert

Name: Senior officials in Xian dismissed from posts as city turns corner on Covid-19 outbreak
Uploaded: 2022-01-05T08:26:09.000Z
Duration: 1 min 46 s
Description: Senior officials in Xian dismissed from posts as city turns corner on Covid-19 outbreak

Xian, whose residents have been locked down for almost two weeks, reported 35 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, a drop from 95 the day before

Zeng Guang, former chief epidemiologist at China CDC, says chains of infection in Xian have not been obvious compared with previous outbreaks

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Residents queue to undergo nucleic acid tests for the Covid-19 coronavirus in Xian in China’s northern Shaanxi province on January 4, 2022. Photo: AFP

Alyssa Chen

Published: 4:26pm, 5 Jan 2022Updated: 5:00pm, 5 Jan 2022

Xian reported a significant drop in new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, raising hopes of a slowdown in the spread of the coronavirus in the northwestern Chinese city where 13 million people have been in lockdown for almost two weeks.

The National Health Commission reported on Wednesday that locally transmitted cases in Xian fell from 95 on Monday to 35 on Tuesday – the lowest daily total since late December.

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Senior officials in Xian dismissed from posts as city turns corner on Covid-19 outbreak

But Zeng Guang, a former chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, cautioned that this would not be the last Covid-19 outbreak in China.

“[Xian] is battling the Delta variant [of the coronavirus] that spreads faster [than the original strain], and the virus has been spotted simultaneously in many covert places,” the Xian Evening News quoted Zeng as saying.

He also added that the chains of infection in Xian were not obvious when compared with previous outbreaks in China.