Risk of Omicron spilling beyond Baise in southern China outbreak ‘high’
- A further 72 cases have brought total infections since Saturday to 180 in the city, which is still in the ‘fast rising’ phase
- Health officials are concerned about the number of patients who travelled to many places before their infections were picked up
There have now been 180 cases in the city, part of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, since the start of the outbreak on Saturday. A further two people are infected but have yet to show symptoms.
National Health Commission official He Qinghua, from the disease control department, said on Tuesday afternoon the Baise outbreak was still in the “fast rising” phase, with a high risk that it would spill to other cities.
“About 80 per cent of the infected people in this outbreak live in the same natural village and share the same space,” he said.
“Due to the long time of hidden transmission in the community, the large number of places people visited, and high mobility of people during the Lunar New Year, the risk of further transmission and spread is relatively high.”
He said the priority was to complete the identification and control of people at a high risk of infection, and to speed up testing in risk areas to find the source of the outbreak as quickly as possible.
According to He, a particular concern was the number of Covid-19 patients – in the Guangxi city of Nanning and in Guangzhou, provincial capital of neighbouring Guangdong – who had visited many different places, increasing the risk of the outbreak growing.
