The "Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Weekly Report (English)" reported on May 16 the specific situation of my country's first imported case confirmed to be infected with the new coronavirus "Omicron" subtype strain "BA.2.12.1".

  On April 23, 2022, an international flight KQ880 from Nairobi, Kenya, arrived at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in Guangdong Province.

All passengers were transferred to quarantine hotels for 14 days of routine medical observation and routine nucleic acid testing.

  One of the patients, a 27-year-old Chinese male, reported positive for novel coronavirus nucleic acid on April 27, 2022.

The patient has a complete Covid-19 vaccination history and no exposure to other Covid-19 cases in the past 14 days.

After the diagnosis, he was transferred to the Eighth People's Hospital of Guangzhou for treatment.

  On April 30, 2022, the patient's nasal swab samples were sequenced using the Illumina MiniSeq platform, and the genotyping results showed that the patient was infected with the Omicron subtype strain BA.2.12.1.

A total of 33 amino acid mutation sites were detected in the spike gene.

Among them, L452Q and S704L are the key loci of BA.2.12.1 sub-lineage.

The sequence has been submitted to the National Genome Data Center.

  On May 4, 2022, the World Health Organization reminded close monitoring of subtype BA.2.12.1.

Compared with other Omicron subtype strains, BA.2.12.1 subtype has stronger immune evasion ability, and some studies have shown that the transmission rate of BA.2.12.1 is 23%~27% faster than that of BA.2.

The subvariant spread very rapidly, causing a resurgence of the epidemic in many parts of the United States, with cases reported in at least 17 countries.

  (Headquarters reporter Chen Xuting)