MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th October, 2020) Local authorities in Kashgar, located in China's western Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, have identified a total of 183 new COVID-19 cases after completing 4.74 million tests for local residents, a top local health official said during a press conference on Tuesday.
"As of 5:00 p.m. (9:00 GMT) on Oct 27, the Kashgar region has five confirmed COVID-19 cases and 178 asymptomatic cases," Li Linyu, the party secretary of the Kashgar Health Commission, said during the press conference.
China lists asymptomatic COVID-19 positive patients separately and does not include them in the country's total COVID-19 case count.
Li added that Kashgar detected 19 new asymptomatic cases on Tuesday, which brought the total number of newly identified COVID-19 cases to 183.
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 County tested positive for the new virus during a routine COVID-19 screening at work on Saturday.
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. Test results released on Sunday showed 137 of her close contacts were infected, but all of them showed no symptoms.
According to Li, local authorities have completed the 4.74 million COVID-19 tests for all local residents.
