China’s latest coronavirus outbreak has spread to a second city in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
One of the 17 new cases reported on Monday was in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, the regional government said on its official microblog. The remainder were in the regional capital of Urumqi, where all other cases have been reported since the outbreak that has now infected at least 47 people emerged earlier this month.
Authorities in Urumqi have tried to prevent the spread by closing off communities and imposing travel restrictions.
Xinjiang is a vast, thinly populated region of mountains and deserts and had seen little impact from the pandemic that emerged from the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year and was largely contained within China in March.
Another five new cases reported Monday by the National Health Commission were imported.
China also said 5,370 people had been arrested for pandemic-related crimes between January and June. More than 40% were charged with fraud, the state prosecutor’s office announced on its official microblog.
Another 15% were charged with obstruction of law enforcement, with others accused of producing and selling fake and shoddy goods, creating public disturbances, and transporting and selling endangered species.
China has strengthened protection for wild animals following the emergence of the virus, which may have originated in bats before jumping to humans via an intermediary species such as the anteater-like pangolin.
No specific figures were given for those accused of violating quarantine rules and travel restrictions, although there have been relatively few such cases reported in official media.
Although faulted for allowing the virus to spread from Wuhan, China’s government has been credited with imposing rigid and sometimes draconian measures to contain the outbreak, and people have overwhelmingly complied with orders to wear masks, display certificates of good health and maintain social distancing.
In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region: — A record surge of 40,425 reported cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours took India’s total to 1,118,043.
The Health Ministry on Monday also reported another 681 deaths, taking total fatalities to 27,497. India has the third most cases and eighth most deaths in the world. A country of 1.4 billion people, India has been conducting nearly 10,000 tests per million population. More than 300,000 samples are being tested daily, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research, India’s top medical research body. With India’s national lockdown largely lifted, local governments have been ordering focused lockdowns on high-risk areas where new outbreaks are surging.