China’s vast Xinjiang hit with COVID-19 travel restrictions

BEIJING (AP) — Sprawling Xinjiang is the latest Chinese region to be hit with sweeping COVID-19 travel restrictions, as China further ratchets up control measures ahead of a key Communist Party congress later this month. Reports Thursday said 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% capacity. 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 just 91 cases in Xinjiang on Wednesday and 97 on Thursday, all of them asymptomatic. Officials are desperate not to be called out for new outbreaks in their regions.