The deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission, Zhao Dandan, said that the new mutant was detected in a case of infection in Pudong Financial District, on July 8, linked to a case imported from abroad.
Shanghai, in eastern China, has lifted closing restrictions that have lasted nearly two months since the beginning of June, but it continues to impose strict restrictions, closing buildings and complexes as soon as a possible outbreak appears.
“Recently, our city continues to register more locally transmitted positive cases of COVID-19, and the risk of the epidemic spreading in the community is still very high,” Zhao warned, according to Archyde.com.
He added that residents in several major areas of Shanghai will undergo two rounds of COVID-19 tests, from July 12 to 14, in an effort to control a possible new outbreak of the disease.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China, the mutant “Omicron PA.5” that causes a new wave of COVID-19 infections abroad, was first detected in China on May 13, in a 37-year-old male patient, He arrived in Shanghai from Uganda.
For his part, Yuan Zhengan, a member of the city’s expert advisory group on COVID-19 prevention, said the PA5 mutant has been shown to have a “rapid spread rate, and an improved ability to escape from the immune system.”
He added that vaccination “is still effective in preventing the mutant from causing serious symptoms or death.”