Beijing’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that residents of the Chinese capital stop receiving mail and goods purchased from abroad after samples of the omicron variant were detected in a letter from Canada.
Among the guidelines, the CDC urged that packages and envelopes be handled with masks and gloves at all times, preferably outside homes and, if possible, after they have been sanitized.
According to authorities, the coronavirus mutation was identified in correspondence received by a man who is the first patient to be diagnosed with the variant in Beijing. The case was confirmed last Saturday (15).
“We do not rule out the possibility that the person was infected by coming into contact with an object from abroad,” said Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing CDC.
Chinese health authorities have reiterated the possibility that it is possible to become infected with the coronavirus through contact with contaminated objects, as would have happened with the patient in Beijing and even in Wuhan, where the first case of Covid-19 was identified a few years ago. more than two years.
This theory, however, is considered highly unlikely by most scientists. Although samples taken from surfaces can produce a positive result in detection tests, this means that the test detected traces of the coronavirus, but not necessarily with enough viral load to infect a person.
Confirmation of the diagnosis in Beijing led the authorities of the Chinese capital to carry out a task force to identify the possible origin of the contamination. According to the CDC’s Pang, the teams learned that the patient occasionally received mail from abroad, so investigators looked at the material sent in the mail.
The letter in which samples of the omicron were found was posted in Toronto, Canada, on January 7th and arrived in Beijing on the 11th, after passing through the United States and Hong Kong.
The CDC said all staff at the unit that received the letter had been quarantined. Eight people who may have had direct contact with the mail were tested for the coronavirus and tested negative.
Beijing officials, however, said they found traces of the virus in five more correspondence also sent from Canada to other addresses in China.
According to Pang, the infected man did not leave Beijing in the 14 days before the diagnosis was confirmed. From the exams, it was also found the presence of the omicron and that the patient, with mild symptoms, was in the initial stage of the disease.
The task force, the fruit of China’s “zero Covid” policy, tracked and tested people who had contact with the patient. According to the CDC, 69 close contacts tested negative, as did 16,500 people who had been in the same environments the man had been in in recent days. This amount of samples was analyzed in a period of 48 hours.
Epidemiologists interviewed by the Global Times, a newspaper aligned with the Chinese Communist Party, said that due to the sequencing of the omicron in the capital, the city could be subject to stricter restrictions, such as traffic control and the imposition of a mass testing campaign.
A spokesman for the Beijing prefecture said on Saturday that the identification of the variant in the city of more than 21 million inhabitants sounds an alarm due to the proximity of the Winter Games, scheduled to start in three weeks. On Monday, in a speech broadcast at the World Economic Forum, the regime’s leader, Xi Jinping, promised that the Beijing Games will be “effective, safe and splendid”.
The fear, however, is that the influx of people in the capital as a result of the sports competition could lead China to a rise in cases similar to that recorded in Japan after the Tokyo Olympics.
On Sunday (16), local authorities determined that, from next Saturday (22) until the end of March, all people arriving in Beijing will have to present a negative Covid test done no more than 48 hours before arrival. They will also have to take a new test within 72 hours of entering the Chinese capital.
According to the Global Times, the CDC has once again mandated the use of masks, with no exceptions, and several schools in Beijing have re-adopted remote teaching this week, the last one before winter break. Cultural centers, religious temples and even a section of the Great Wall of China were also closed as a preventive measure.
Nationwide, China reported 223 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, the highest number since March 2020. Most infections were confirmed in Tianjin, in the north of the country, and in Henan Province, in the central region, where there are cities where the authorities have decreed confinements to contain the spread.
.
