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Residents line up for Covid-19 tests in Tianjin in November. Photo: Xinhua

China’s first Omicron case is overseas returnee in northern Tianjin city

  • Patient classified as asymptomatic carrier upon arrival found to be carrying new variant while serving mandatory quarantine
  • Zhejiang province remains the focus of the latest coronavirus outbreak in China, with 74 more cases on Sunday
China has reported its first case of the Omicron Covid-19 variant, a patient in Tianjin who returned from overseas last week.

The patient was classified as an asymptomatic carrier upon arrival in the northern city on December 9. But a full-sequence test later revealed the presence of the new variant of Sars-CoV-2, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The patient was under mandatory quarantine for overseas arrivals when diagnosed and is being treated at a designated hospital.

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Omicron spreads to 48 countries, party in Norway becomes superspreader event for coronavirus variant

Omicron spreads to 48 countries, party in Norway becomes superspreader event for coronavirus variant
Cases of Omicron, a “variant of concern” according to the World Health Organization (WHO), have already spread to more than 50 countries after first being reported in South Africa, with many nations beginning to reinstate border restrictions and travel bans.
China reported 101 confirmed Covid-19 cases on Sunday, with 80 linked to local transmissions and 21 from overseas, official data showed. Delta is still the dominant strain in the country.

The eastern coastal province of Zhejiang remains the focus of the latest coronavirus outbreak, with 74 more community cases reported across three cities.

Elsewhere, five cases were detected in the northern border city of Manzhouli in Inner Mongolia, while Xian in northwestern Shaanxi province reported one.

China to ‘wait, see and keep up zero-Covid rules’ for Omicron

Chinese officials previously admitted that there was a high chance of the new Omicron variant being introduced to the country, but were sure that China’s stringent testing regime would succeed in detecting any cases and its zero-tolerance strategy would effectively halt community transmission.

George Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said earlier this month that “our vaccines still work [against Omicron] but their efficacy is greatly compromised. It is hard to tell to what extent.”
China’s Brii Biosciences said on Sunday that laboratory studies showed its Covid-19 antibody cocktail retained activity against the Omicron variant, although one of the antibodies showed a substantial drop in activity when tested alone.
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