Covid cases surge in Xinjiang despite strict lockdown measures

 Public outrage in China's Xinjiang region continues as coronavirus cases are on the surge despite severe lockdown measures.

In order to tackle the situation, Xinjiang's Communist Party secretary Ma Xingrui visited districts and counties in the capital Urumqi which is severely impacted by such protests and hit by the recent wave of COVID-19, Radio Free Asia reported citing a Monday report by state-controlled Xinjiang Daily.

The districts visited by the party secretary were Tianshan, Shayibak, Shuimogou, High-tech Zone, and Midong districts of Urumqi to investigate epidemic prevention and control measures, community management services, and hospitals.

Moreover, after the severe covid outbreak in August and September, Chinese officials imposed strict lockdowns in Xinjiang which resulted in some deaths of Uyghurs from starvation as well as lack of medical care, as per Radio Free Asia.

The local officials also detained 600 Uyghurs from a village in Ghulja (Yining) in the northern part of Xinjiang after they protested the lockdown that has made the lives of locals miserable.

Time and again, Uyghurs and other minorities in the Xinjiang region also have been subjected to severe human rights violations which Beijing claims to be part of a broad "anti-terrorism" campaign.

Since the first case was found on July 30, the Xinjiang region has seen at least 12 counties in seven prefectures hit by COVID-19, Global Times reported.

A medical expert specializing in epidemic prevention and control, Zhang Yuexin said, "The challenge for Xinjiang is that more cases still can be found among communities, which indicates that the transmission chain has yet to be cut off."

Officials from the local health authority said that the Xinjiang region has been hit by multiple sporadic clusters of COVID-19 infections, and the current epidemic prevention and control situation is still grim.

According to data from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region's Department of Culture and Tourism, the Xinjiang region has witnessed a surge in the number of tourists this summer.

The gatherings of people and cross-regional movement may have potentially increased the transmission of the virus and the risk of its spread inside and outside Xinjiang, health authorities said.

According to the Chinese Health Commission, as of November 8, a total of 265,013 COVID-19 cases have been reported in China since the pandemic emerged. Of these, 2,52,543 patients had been cured and discharged from the hospital while 5,226 died due to the pandemic.