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From our correspondent
Nanjing: more than four million swabs from a positive case. It is the Chinese method, which shows how concerned the authorities are about the coronavirus. A case of asymptomatic positivity for Covid-19 was identified in a “routine check” in a rural area near Kashgar in Xinjiang on Saturday. One of the rare internal infections in China for months (now the strictest controls are at airports for cases “imported” from abroad).
The positive, not ill, is a 17-year-old girl: it is not explained why she was examined. The Chinese “trackers” immediately tested the parents, and also found asymptomatic positives. They have extended the controls to “close contacts”: relatives and co-workers in a textile factory in the area. Total: 137 asymptomatic all related to the girl. The 138 asymptomatic patients were sent to a medical center: they will be treated even if they do not present symptoms, kept under observation until two negative swabs pass. This is the Chinese procedure.
Authorities say the situation in Kashgar is under control, which is “a small sporadic outbreak”. Yesterday, the China Health Commission reported a total of 20 new cases (all imported) and 161 asymptomatic for all of China. But that is not all. In Xinjiang, sweeping controls have been initiated across the entire population of Kashgar prefecture, no matter how small and isolated the outbreak.
Kashgar, a city of more than 700,000 inhabitants, is the capital of a prefecture of 4.7 million inhabitants: 2.8 million had already been tested last night. The tampons will continue to the bitter end. Since Saturday, the suspended flights and trains from Kashgar, schools closed and the population requested not to move from their homes to allow health personnel to proceed with the tests. It had already happened in the capital of Xinjiang, Urumqi: in July, closure due to an outbreak of 900 positive cases. In China it works like this: massive hyssop has already been used in Wuhan (11 million people in May); in Beijing in June (10 million people, then, finding no cases, stopped before reaching 20 million); 11 million since October 14 in Qingdao (again, no positives officially emerged).
Now, however, even in Beijing, some are wondering whether mass testing is not a waste of energy and resources. “The social costs are excessive and unnecessary,” said Professor Wu Zunyong of the Center for Disease Control, calling for a more limited and specific approach to individual outbreaks.
October 26, 2020 (change October 26, 2020 | 14:58)
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