Covid 4th wave: China detects new Omicron subtype BA.1.1 as cases exceed 12,000 mark

With 12,000 new Covid-19 cases being reported in China on Saturday, the country has also detected a new subtype of the omicron variant.

The case of the new subtype, BA.1.1, was first reported in Dalian city in northern China on Friday as per the municipal government. The patient in which the new subtype was found has been isolated from less than 70 kilometres from Shanghai. 

As per reports, the new subtype does not match the previous reports that caused coronavirus in China nor the ones submitted to GISAID.

Also read | Amid WHO's warning against XE variant, where are Covid cases rising in the world?

On Saturday, Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, who was sent to Shanghai by the central government, urged the city to "make resolute and swift moves" to curb the pandemic. The eastern city of Suzhou said it had detected a version of the Omicron BA.1.1 subvariant that doesn`t match any others in the domestic database or the international variant tracking database GISAID, state television reported. 

The state-backed Science and Technology Daily said it remains unclear whether the virus is a new sub-branch of Omicron and that the emergence of one or two new versions is normal given the spread of Omicron in China, citing an unidentified expert with a national database. 

On the other hand, China has sent the military and thousands of healthcare workers into Shanghai to help carry out COVID-19 tests for all of its 26 million residents as cases continued to rise on Monday, in one of the country`s biggest-ever public health responses. 

More than 10,000 healthcare workers from provinces such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Beijing have arrived in Shanghai, according to state media reports, which showed them arriving, suitcase-laden and masked up, by high-speed rail and aircraft. 

It is China`s largest public health response since it tackled the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, where the novel coronavirus was first discovered in late 2019. The State Council said the PLA dispatched more than 4,000 medical personnel to the province of Hubei, where Wuhan is, at that time. 

Shanghai, which began a two-stage lockdown on March 28 that has been expanded to confine practically all residents to their homes, reported 8,581 asymptomatic COVID-19 cases and 425 symptomatic COVID cases for April 3. It also asked residents to self-test on Sunday.