The Global Times (October 5) quoted Liu Sushe, Vice Chairman of the Xinjiang-Uyghur
Autonomous Region government, as saying the latest epidemic outbreak has become the most
difficult major public health emergency to prevent and control in local history, during which
the nucleic acid testing has become the biggest weakness. 91 new local asymptomatic cases
were recorded on October 4 bringing the total to 354 in the region. He said the current round
of epidemic prevention and control work in Xinjiang has not achieved the goal of "dynamic
zero-COVID" for two months not only due to the reasons of strong infectiousness, fast
transmission and short incubation period of the Omicron BA.5.2 variant, but also because of
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some loopholes in the anti-epidemic work. He added that the latest epidemic, which broke out
on July 30 in Xinjiang, has spread to 37 corps of counties, cities and districts of 13 prefectures,
which has become a major public health emergency with the fastest transmission speed, the
widest coverage, the largest number of infected people, and the greatest difficulty in prevention
and control in the history of Xinjiang. Liu Sushe also apologized for the spill over of the
infections to many other provinces and regions. The Global Times (October 5) quoted Yang
Zhanqiu, Professor of the Pathogen Biology Department at Wuhan University, as saying as
Xinjiang is getting colder and the temperature in Urumqi mostly has been below 10 C recently,
the COVID-19 virus is becoming more active in the region, making it easier to transmit. In
early August, the local regional health authority said the virus was of a different origin from
the Omicron sub-variant BA.5.2 in the domestic coronavirus gene sequence database, so it can
be concluded that the virus was imported from abroad.
ii) Caixin (October 5) disclosed that the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has suspended
all passenger train travel from the region to prevent a two-month outbreak of Covid-19 from
spreading further. The governments of four cities including the capital Urumqion October 4
warned people against leaving after other parts of the country reported new imported cases of
Covid-19 coming from Xinjiang. The warning arrived just days before the CCP is scheduled
to hold its 20th Party Congress in Beijing.
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