A tour group that traveled from Shanghai to Gansu, Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi caused secondary Covid-19 infections in 11 provincial regions, including six cases in Beijing. The patient was a close contact of a confirmed case from Ningxia, who in turn was a confirmed contact of the Shanghai tour group. The first Beijing case was on the same train as the infected person from Ningxia. The seven elderly tourists in the tour group all tested positive in Xian, Shaanxi province. Two streets in Beijing's Fengtai district are under closed management, and people from outside are advised not to visit the two streets. Fengtai has tracked 258 close contacts of the confirmed case, and a local school which had contact with one close contact was asked to suspend classes for a week. Nine cases have also been identified in Changping district. Wang Guangfa, Respiratory Expert at Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times that the source of the latest infections was likely imported from overseas, as China has cleared its local infections long time ago and the sporadic outbreaks since the Wuhan outbreak were all related to imported sources.
The total number of infections in this latest outbreak has now risen to more than 137 over the past week, of whom 106 were traveling in tour groups. Gansu province has suspended all tourist activities and all tourists in Lanzhou are required to remain in quarantine. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has ordered travel agencies to suspend cross-provincial tourism activities in regions with medium- or high-risk areas. People from counties with new infections or travelers who have visited the counties with new cases within 14 days are not allowed to enter Beijing. It has been confirmed that the virus that resulted in the ongoing outbreaks came from overseas, but how it entered China remains unknown. In Beijing the first local cases were reported following more than two months of zero local cases in the city.
The flare-up led affected provincial regions to temporarily close some tourist spots, suspend transportation services and place some streets under closed management. Wang Guangfa said that China should stick to its current epidemic strategy before reopening to the world as the global pandemic is not under control.
Though there is no timeline for when China will lift border restrictions, the country will do so after meeting a number of requirements, including figuring out the efficacy of the vaccines and taking into consideration the global pandemic situation, according to Wang. “When will China relax its border controls?”, a commentator in the Global Times asked. “Judging from the current situation, as long as the pandemic goes on, China will not do so. If we take economic, social, security, environmental protection and other benefits all into consideration, it is not difficult to conclude that the advantage of China's continued adherence to strict border control measures will obviously outweigh the disadvantages.”
At least three districts of Beijing, Chaoyang, Dongcheng and Tongzhou, are beginning to offer Covid-19 vaccine booster shots to residents over 18 years old who were fully vaccinated at least six months ago, joining at least 18 provincial-level regions in China. Experts said that the move was prompted by the approach of winter as well as the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. According to the latest available data 19,796,400 people in Beijing had been fully vaccinated as of September 28. The full vaccination rate of the city's adult residents reached 98.42%.
A Chinese team has developed a new test method for Covid-19 which only requires the person to be tested to exhale into a bag for 30 seconds, with 5 to 10 minutes needed to finish the analysis. Team leader Yao Maosheng, Professor at the College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at Peking University, said that the test is highly accurate, and can differentiate among Covid-19 carriers, healthy people and patients suffering from other respiratory infections. Higher levels of propanol were detected in the exhaled breath of Covid-19 patients and other respiratory infections than in healthy subjects, while breath-borne acetone was found to be significantly lower for Covid-19 patients than those with other respiratory infections. The quick procedure and high accuracy give the new method an edge compared to antigen-based quick testing, as it is more convenient, faster and does not require the use of reagents. The test is also capable of identifying an infected person with a false negative throat swab test, and symptomatic and pre-symptomatic infections can be detected earlier. The test could produce false positives but no false negatives.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines' flight from Amsterdam to Shanghai has been suspended for another two weeks, starting from November 11, by China's civil aviation regulator. Flight KL857 was put on hold after seven passengers on a flight from Amsterdam tested positive for Covid-19 on October 6. The flight has been suspended since October 18 after eight cases were discovered on the flight on September 29. A flight suspension is extended from one week to two if five or more passengers test positive. The suspension lasts for four weeks if the number reaches 10. If all inbound passengers of an airline test negative three weeks in a row, the airline will be allowed to increase its flights to two per week.
This overview is based on reports by the China Daily, Global Times and Shanghai Daily.
