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China ‘cannot relax coronavirus controls’ amid threat from Delta variant
- Health official says authorities will continue to focus on preventing imported cases from spreading locally after recent outbreaks
- Limited data on how well vaccines work against highly infectious strain but expert says ‘partial protection is better than no protection’
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China has signalled it has no plans to lower its guard against Covid-19 as the threat posed by the highly transmissible Delta variant increases.
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Li Bin, vice-minister of the National Health Commission, said authorities would continue to focus on preventing imported infections from spreading locally and strengthen inspection of imported goods.
“Some cities have recently seen local clusters caused by imported cases of the Delta variant, including Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Ruili,” he told reporters in Beijing on Thursday. “These waves have reminded us that we cannot relax our pandemic control measures.”
Ruili, a city on the border with Myanmar, went into lockdown on Wednesday as authorities try to keep a lid on China’s latest outbreak of Covid-19, which has been linked to the Delta strain.
The Delta variant, first discovered in India and circulating in more than 100 countries, is estimated to be 55 per cent more transmissible than the Alpha variant first found in Britain, according to the World Health Organization.
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“Even the Delta variant itself is mutating and it will continue to do so. We still have the upper hand. Let’s use the tools that we have to keep transmission down,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, told reporters on Wednesday.
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