China announced on January 15 that 65 cases of COVID-19 were transmitted locally, including the first case of the Omicron variant in the Chinese capital, a few weeks before the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 4 and the Chinese New Year holidays. Year.
Their number is lower than the 104 cases announced a day earlier, as the outbreak in the northwestern city of Xi’an escalates after severe lockdowns. However, the highly contagious Omicron strain has been identified in at least five provinces and municipalities, forcing cities to impose restrictions to halt its spread, further threatening to slow economic recovery.
Yesterday, the capital Beijing recorded the first case of local transmission of the Omicron variant, which concerns a citizen who visited many shopping malls and restaurants in the past 14 days. This person has not left the city since the beginning of this year.
China has not announced exactly how many Omicron cases it has detected in total.
About 13,000 people have been tested in Haidan province where the case was found, but none were tested positive, according to official figures cited by the government newspaper Beijing Daily.
However, some places of worship in the city are already closed to visitors as a precaution.
“It’s too early to conclude that Omicron will stifle China’s efforts to combat COVID,” Mark Williams, chief economist for Asia at Capital Economics, said in a report on Friday. “But it is clear that the emergence of more contagious variants requires more frequent interventions; and the financial cost of this vigilance is increasing.”
Some Beijing residents, worried that they will be trapped in the city for the upcoming Chinese New Year holidays, rush to travel to their particular homelands because of Omicron.
“I’m concerned that the source of the infection in Beijing remains unclear,” said Seli Fong, who decided to travel to Lianoning Province tomorrow to see her family. “If there is an outbreak in Beijing, I will not be able to return home.”
“What if there are no flights? What if there is a lockdown in Beijing? These are real chances.”
Outside the Beijing Friendship Hospital today, queues formed for a COVID-19 test resulted in citizens waiting for hours in low temperatures to be examined.
Mainland China announced 119 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Jan. 15, including ‘imported’ cases, up from 165 a day earlier, according to the National Health Commission (NHC) today.
No new deaths were recorded, with the total number remaining at 4,636. As of January 15, mainland China had recorded a total of 104,864 confirmed cases.
Source: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ
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Source From: Capital
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