Beijing coronavirus outbreak could have link to South or Southeast Asia, study claims

Name: Global Covid-19 death toll hits 500,000 as coronavirus infections surge past 10 million
Uploaded: 2020-07-02T00:30:11.000Z
Duration: 2 min 45 s
Description: Global Covid-19 death toll hits 500,000 as coronavirus infections surge past 10 million

Genes from three virus strains part of a group reported ‘almost exclusively’ in Asia’s tropical zone, according to Harvard team

But a Chinese researcher says a conclusion can’t be reached and ‘they could have come from anywhere’

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

A fresh coronavirus outbreak emerged in Beijing in June after nearly two months without any cases. Photo: Reuters

Stephen Chen

Published: 8:30am, 2 Jul 2020Updated: 12:52pm, 2 Jul 2020

A new coronavirus outbreak in Beijing could have come from strains that originated in South Asia or Southeast Asia, according to a study by Harvard University researchers.

The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, was based on the genetic sequencing data of three virus strains – two from patients in Beijing and the other from the environment – made public by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

Georg Hahn, a research associate with the Biostatistics Department of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and his team compared these genes to more than 7,000 whole-genome sequences reported from around the world.

They found the three strains were part of a group that has been mostly circulating in Europe, but has recently been reported “almost exclusively” in Asia’s tropical zone.

“The new cases in Beijing were reintroduced by transmissions from South(east) Asia” between April and June, Hahn and his colleagues said in a paper posted on preprint server bioRxiv.org on Tuesday.

02:45

Global Covid-19 death toll hits 500,000 as coronavirus infections surge past 10 million

A cluster of new infections emerged in Beijing on June 11 after nearly two months without any cases. More than 7 million people have now been tested across the Chinese capital as part of efforts to control the outbreak, which has so far led to 326 cases – many of them linked to a wholesale food market. In Wuhan, where the new virus was first reported in December, the earliest cases were also linked to a food market.