With the first e-commerce China-Europe freight train departing from Ganzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province on Saturday, the city's cross-border e-commerce pilot zone has started business. The train, carrying lamps, electronic products, daily necessities and other items, adds a new option for foreign trading firms in Ganzhou. The journey to Germany is scheduled to take about 17 days. Photo: cnsphotos

China-Europe freight transport has been operating normally through ports between China and Kazakhstan, despite emerging concerns about the worsening epidemic situation in the Central Asian country.

An employee of Alashankou port in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, one of the frontier ports between China and Kazakhstan, told the Global Times that the cargo transport through the port has been operating normally and might not be impacted much despite the worsening situation in Kazakhstan.

Citing Kazakhstan media, the Chinese Embassy in Kazakhstan on Thursday warned Chinese citizens living in the country of a local pneumonia of unknown cause, which local media reported has a "much higher" fatality rate than COVID-19. This was later denied by Kazakhstan officials. Further details have not yet been revealed.

According to Johns Hopkins University, Kazakhstan has reported over 54,000 confirmed coronavirus infections as of Friday.

"Inspection of cargos has been enhanced since the outbreak of the coronavirus," an employee in the epidemic prevention and control center in Alashankou city told the Global Times on Friday.

Xinjiang's coronavirus prevention and control center held a meeting on June 28 and stressed the need to guard the safety of exchange through frontier ports, including measures for strict nucleic acid testing and quarantine for related personnel. There are five frontier ports between China and Kazakhstan.

Though the pandemic continues to grow around the world and has caused wide transport restrictions globally, the China-Europe freight trains have seen booming operations in the first half of the year. 

China-Europe freight trains recorded 5,122 journeys in the first half of the year, up 36 percent year-on-year amid the pandemic. The number in June reached a record high of 1,169, read a statement sent to the Global Times by China Railway on Friday.

Among all the China-Europe freight train journeys, 2,128 of them went through Alashankou port, according to the news site of the Alashankou government.

Another major frontier port between China and Kazakhstan, Khorgas port in Xinjiang, reported 1,324 inbound and outbound China-Europe freight trains in the first five months, an increase of 8.97 percent year-on-year, per media reports.