New COVID-19 patient in Guangzhou city likely to be associated with imported case

The newly detected COVID-19 patient in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, was found to be associated with an imported case as the genetic sequencing of the patient is highly homologous to that of an imported case reported on Saturday, said an official from Guangzhou Health Commission Sunday.

The patient, a 42-year-old female surnamed Xu, worked in an isolation hotel in Guangzhou's Yuexiu district for food delivery and room cleaning.

She tested positive for COVID-19 during a routine nucleic acid test in the hotel on Saturday.

Considering Xu's genetic sequencing results and epidemiological investigation, she was highly likely to have been infected when she was accidentally exposed to the virus while collecting garbage on Wednesday, said Chen Bin, deputy director of Guangzhou Health Commission, at a press conference on Sunday.

Experts' judgement showed that the risk of community transmission was low, Chen said.

Xu has been living in the hotel since Tuesday, and the last five routine nucleic acid tests on Saturday were all negative.

The hotel has 56 staff members and 103 people living in isolation. Since August, seven imported cases have been reported in the hotel.

The areas around where Xu lived were sealed off, with people only allowed to enter and not leave. The community near the hotel conducted a mass test for residents on Saturday afternoon.

Northwest China's Shaanxi Province required that all passengers leaving from Guangzhou's Baiyun airport to Shaanxi need to present negative nucleic acid test certificate within 48 hours, according to an announcement that Baiyun airport issued on Saturday night.

More than 33 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in the city, with around 16 million people fully vaccinated, covering 86.1 percent of the population.

Guangzhou had experienced a local COVID-19 cluster caused by imported virus variants including the Delta variant in May and June.

The mutated virus has brought great challenges to the prevention and control work in Guangzhou, and the city is faced with an increase of imported virus cases, said Chen, noting that the government will beef up guard against overseas infection during the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival, The National Day and The China Import and Export Fair.