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| China's vast Xinjiang hit with COVID-19 travel restrictions | | |
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BEIJING, Oct 6: The sprawling Xinjiang region in western China has been hit with sweeping COVID-19 travel restrictions as the government ratchets up control measures across the country ahead of a key Communist Party congress later this month.
Trains and buses in and out of the region of 22 million people have been suspended, and passenger numbers on flights have been reduced to 75 per cent of capacity in recent days, according to Chinese media reports.
A notice from the regional government on Tuesday said the measures were enacted to strictly prevent the risk of spillover" of the virus.
A Xinjiang official apologized for the spread of the epidemic to other regions and provinces in China, particularly in recent days.
As is often the case with China's draconian zero-COVID policy, the measures seemed out of proportion to the number of cases detected.
The National Health Commission announced on Thursday that 97 cases had been recorded in Xinjiang in the latest 24-hour period, after 91 cases were reported the previous day. All of them were asymptomatic.
Officials are desperate not to be called out for new outbreaks in their regions and Xinjiang has been under special scrutiny over the government's establishment of a series of prison-like re-education centres in which Muslim minorities have been taught to renounce their religion and allegedly subjected to a range of human rights abuses.
Xinjiang's vast surveillance system, relying on ubiquitous checkpoints, facial and even voice recognition software, and universal cell phone monitoring has made controlling travel among the population especially easy.
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