Covid-19 Omicron variant jumps to new city in southern China after family drive
- 11-year-old close contact of Zhuhai case tests positive in Meizhou, is transferred to neighbouring Shenzhen for treatment
- There were 163 locally acquired infections across the country on Monday, with nine reported in Guangdong province
Authorities in the city of Meizhou urged people to stay put after an 11-year-old boy tested positive for the highly transmissible variant on Sunday. He has been transferred to neighbouring Shenzhen for treatment.
The boy is a close contact of a confirmed case in Zhuhai, also in Guangdong province. He arrived in Meizhou on Tuesday night with his parents – after a five-hour drive – and had been tested repeatedly since Friday.
His seventh sample returned a positive result and officials said he was asymptomatic at that time. He is now showing symptoms and is being treated in isolation. Genome sequencing confirmed it was the same transmission chain as the Omicron variant in Zhuhai.
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Meizhou authorities launched a second round of mass testing in three of the city’s townships, after no cases were uncovered from more than 117,000 samples taken in round one.
