China detects second omicron case in 67-year-old overseas traveller

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

China has reported its second case of the new omicron variant of Covid, just one day after recording its first.

The case was reported in a 67-year-old traveller in the southern city of Guangzhou, according to several state-run media outlets on Tuesday.

The traveller had gone abroad and returned to the country on 27 November and was placed in quarantine at the first landing city, reported the state-run Global Times newspaper.

He then flew back to Guangzhou, where he was in home isolation and where he tested positive for Covid.

Authorities in Guangzhou then delimited the affected regions in the city into three different zones to implement different epidemic control measures, in keeping with China’s “zero-tolerance policy”, according to the Global Times.

The policy includes strict testing, case tracing, quarantining and isolation.

All of the traveller’s contacts as well as the residents in his building were quarantined and tested for Covid.

Authorities said 9,196 samples from the individual’s close contacts and building residents and “tests on all related personnel” came out negative.

“We do not need to be afraid of omicron with the implementation of the dynamic zero-case policy and strictly observing the precise prevention and control measures,” Zhong Nanshan, China’s top respiratory expert, was quoted as saying by the Global Times.

The second case comes just a day after the country reported its first omicron case in Tianjin city in a Polish national who arrived from Warsaw on 9 December.

While the Polish traveler did not have any symptoms, he later tested positive for Covid, reported state-run Tianjin Daily on Monday.

The case was designated the country’s first omicron infection after genome sequencing of his sample was conducted at the Tianjin Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

On 13 December, China recorded 76 new cases of Covid, of which 51 were locally transmitted, according to a statement by the National Health Commission.

A day earlier, the country recorded 101 new cases, of which 80 were locally transmitted.

National Health Commission official Wu Liangyou said on Saturday that an outbreak in three cities – Ningbo, Shaoxing and Hangzhou – in eastern China’s Zhejiang province was developing at a “relatively rapid” speed, while the situation nationwide was largely stable.

As of 13 December, mainland China had reported a total 99,856 confirmed Covid cases with 4,636 deaths.