(Fighting against New Coronary Pneumonia) China Disease Control Weekly Report: China reports its first imported case of Omicron BA.5 infection
China News Agency, Beijing, May 30. According to the English weekly report recently released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, China has discovered the first case of imported new coronavirus Omikron variant BA.5 infection.
The weekly report said that an international flight from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, arrived at Shanghai Pudong International Airport on April 27 this year, and the passengers were transferred to a quarantine hotel for 14 days of medical observation and regular COVID-19 tests.
One of the 37-year-old Chinese male passengers tested positive for nucleic acid on April 29 and was diagnosed as a mild case of new coronary pneumonia.
According to reports, the case departed from Uganda on April 25, transferred in Amsterdam on the 26th, and transferred in Seoul, South Korea on the 27th.
The patient has received 4 doses of the new coronavirus vaccine in China and Uganda.
After the diagnosis, the patient was transferred to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center for treatment, and was discharged on May 12 after recovery.
On May 13, the patient's nasopharyngeal swab sample (collected on April 29) underwent genome sequencing, and the results showed that the patient was infected with the new coronavirus Omicron BA.5 variant.
This genome is most closely related to a set of gene sequences uploaded in South Africa, and 34 non-synonymous mutations occurred in the S gene, which are in line with the characteristics of the BA.5 subtype.
The genetic sequence of BA.5 was first uploaded on March 15, 2022, from a nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swab of a patient collected on February 25 in South Africa.
Along with BA.4, the BA.5 variant caused an increase in the outbreak in South Africa in recent weeks and spread to 19 other countries within 3 months.
In some countries, such as Portugal, the BA.5 variant led to an increase in the number of cases.
South Africa has also reported a modest increase in hospital admissions since late April.
The weekly report also pointed out that correlated variants may affect the properties of BA.5, making it appear to have a growth advantage over BA.1 and BA.2, which may be mainly driven by immune evasion.
One of the variants is also the cause of the failure of the S gene target in nucleic acid testing, but nucleic acid testing that includes multiple gene targets still maintains accuracy for this variant lineage.
The weekly report said that studies have shown that the level of vaccination and the high level of BA.2 epidemic waves in various countries may have played a role in the emergence of BA.5, and continuous monitoring and analysis are still needed to further elucidate the characteristics of this subtype. influences.
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