New Covid-19 strain found in China

CCDC Weekly of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention said the case was “the first imported (British) variant in China and a major potential threat to the prevention and control of COVID-19 in China.”

CCDC Weekly said the 23-year-old woman had tested negative for Covid-19 two days before her flight to China. Subsequent sequencing of her positive test revealed it was different from a minor outbreak of cases in Shanghai in November and the strains from Wuhan, where Covid-19 was first found.

The patient’s case of Covid-19 was diagnosed as mild, the paper said, noting that several control measures were taken to isolate the woman and identify those who sat near her or interacted with her during the flight .

News of the new species’ spread to China comes a year after disease control authorities in the central city of Wuhan issued an internal warning of the emergence of pneumonia patients, and detection of what was later dubbed Covid-19. While life has now returned to normal in most of China, the country has experienced new clusters of the disease while avoiding the strict lockdowns of earlier this year.

At the end of Wednesday, China’s main regulatory body approved the massive use of a vaccine produced by a Beijing-based drug development unit of China National Pharmaceutical Group Co., better known as Sinopharm.

In a New Year’s speech on Thursday, President Xi Jinping called China’s national spirit in response to the outbreak, which has recorded nearly 96,000 cases and 4,782 deaths, according to official figures. “We have overcome the effects of the pandemic and have had great results in coordinating prevention and control and in economic and social development,” he said.

Reuters first reported the notice regarding the detection of the British species in China. The CCDC Weekly paper, from authors affiliated with China’s top disease prevention agencies, has barely received any attention in major Chinese state media.

This week, health officials said the new species was first discovered in the US in a man in Colorado.

The strain was discovered in the UK in September and was responsible for more than 60% of new cases in London in early December, scientists there said. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed new lockdowns in the country on December 19, citing the easier transmission, prompting several other countries to suspend commercial flights to London.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Dec. 24 that China followed other countries in suspending flights from the UK

Write to James T. Areddy at [email protected]