Seven elderly people in a cross-provincial tour group tested positive for Covid-19. The group, which departed from Shanghai, traveled to Gansu, Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi. Local governments have scrambled to track down their close contacts. The Xi'an government announced that it will carry out city-wide testing. The first two cases discovered in Shaanxi involve a couple from Shanghai that left the city by airplane for Zhangye in Gansu province, switching planes in Xi'an on October 9. Between October 9 and 15, they took a road trip in Gansu and Inner Mongolia. The seven patients are all in their 60s and 70s, and they all departed together from Shanghai and traveled together in a group. There was also another confirmed infection in Yinchuan in Ningxia, a close contact of the Shanghai couple. An epidemiological survey is under way to determine how the Shanghai couple was infected.
One asymptomatic case was also reported in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, where the whole city was immediately tested and a second round of testing was launched, indicating that China was not abandoning its zero Covid policy.
Many places in China are enhancing anti-epidemic measures and accelerating the rollout of Covid-19 booster shots in face of increasing outbreak risk as winter sets in, bringing about a cold environment more suitable for virus survival and transmission. However, the probability of cluster outbreaks is low, experts said, while calling on personnel at ports and medical institutes to be extremely cautious.
Facing reports of new cases across the country, Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University's First Hospital, warned that strict anti-epidemic management should be maintained at ports, medical institutes and among the transient population. Timely epidemiological investigation is also needed to prevent virus transmission, he noted. Wang tried to ease public concerns by saying that, despite the low probability of clustered infections, in general, this winter will be stable for China as, on the one hand, China has built a system to deal with outbreaks, and on the other hand, infection rates overseas are easing due to growing vaccination rates. But he also warned of epidemic resurgence overseas despite high vaccination due to virus mutations that may affect vaccine effectiveness, noting the importance of strict anti-epidemic measures. More than 2.23 billion vaccine shots have been administered in China, and nearly a dozen places across the country are already rolling out booster shots.
