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Published: Jul 16, 2022 01:05 AM
By Leng Shumei
COVID-19 infections continue to increase in some Chinese cities as the country is faced with sporadic outbreaks caused by highly transmissible Omicron variants. Since Friday, the Huaiyuan county in East China's Anhui Province have been put under closed management after 151 positive results were reported during a primary nucleic acid testing the day before.
... Officials in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu, said on Thursday highly contagious Omicron subvariant BA.2.38 had been detected in local communities.
BA.2.38 has been a prevailing Omicron subvariant in some Indian cities like Mumbai and Pune since June.
A key mutation in BA.2.38 is the K417T mutation that had been discovered in the Gamma variant previously, which to some extent explained the strong ability to escape immunity response of Gamma, Zhuang Shilihe, a Guangzhou-based expert who closely followed the COVID-19 pandemic, told the Global Times on Friday.
Research in India had showed that BA.2.38 did not lead to an increase in hospitalization and disease severity, according to Zhuang.
Previously, another offspring of Omicron sub-variants BA.5.2 had also being detected in recent outbreaks in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. ...
