China's Xinjiang Region Records 26 New COVID-19 Cases Amid New Local Outbreak

China's Xinjiang Region Records 26 New COVID-19 Cases Amid New Local Outbreak

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2020) Local authorities in Kashgar in China's western Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region identified another 26 patients who tested positive for COVID-19 but remained asymptomatic, as the region was battling a new COVID-19 outbreak, after the authorities detected 137 infected patients on Sunday.

"From 4:00 p.m. (08:00 GMT) on Oct 25 to 4:00 p.m on Oct 26, the Kashgar region reported no confirmed cases of COVID-19 and added 26 asymptomatic infected cases who all came from the Shufu county and were the close contacts of those infected patients detected on Oct 25," Wang Xijiang, the deputy director of the Kashgar Center of Disease Control, said during a press conference on Monday.

China lists asymptomatic COVID-19 positive patients separately and does not include them in the country's total COVID-19 case counts.

Local authorities in Kashgar stepped up their efforts in testing local residents for possible COVID-19 infections, after a 17-year-old girl who worked in a textile factory in Shufu tested positive for the new virus during a routine COVID-19 screening at work on Saturday.

The girl remained asymptomatic as of Monday.

In response to the girl's confirmed COVID-19 infection, 831 staff members at her factory and 406 of her close contacts were tested on Saturday. Tests results released on Sunday showed 137 of her close contacts were infected, but all of them showed no symptoms.

By 4:00 p.m. on Monday, Wang said the Kashgar region had conducted 4.47 million COVID-19 tests and returned 2.13 million results, which only revealed 26 additional asymptomatic infections.

Wang added that the region was expected to complete 4.74 million COVID-19 tests as part of its efforts to contain the new outbreak.

Local authorities stressed during a press conference on Sunday that Kashgar was not under lockdown and people with negative COVID-19 test results within seven days could leave the region without additional quarantine requirements.