COVID Strain In Beijing Outbreak May Have Come From Southeast Asia: Study

The outbreak traced to Beijing’s enormous Xinfadi wholesale market on June 11 had contaminated 329 folks.

Shanghai:

A pressure of COVID-19 that has contaminated greater than 300 folks in Beijing since early June may have originated in South or Southeast Asia, in line with a examine by Harvard University researchers.

The outbreak in Beijing has raised considerations about China’s vulnerability to a “second wave” of infections. The virus present in Beijing instances is an imported pressure of COVID-19, in line with the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Harvard examine, printed on the preprint web site medRxiv.org on Tuesday and which has nonetheless to be peer-reviewed, took three of the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences collected in Beijing final month and in contrast them to 7,643 samples worldwide.

The three genomes confirmed the best resemblance to instances in Europe from February to May, and to instances in South and Southeast Asia from May to June.

They have been additionally just like a small variety of infections seen in China in March, suggesting the pressure may have appeared first in China after which returned to the nation three months later, the authors stated.

“As the most recent cases in these branches are almost exclusively from South(east) Asia, this could suggest that the new cases in Beijing were re-introduced by transmissions from South(east) Asia,” they wrote.

The outbreak traced to Beijing’s enormous Xinfadi wholesale market on June 11 had contaminated 329 folks by the tip of Wednesday.

Quarantine restrictions and large-scale testing of residents started quickly after the primary instances have been recognized, and China additionally required all shipments of imported meat to be examined for COVID-19 earlier than they might depart its ports.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus was believed to have originated in a market within the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan in December final yr and has now contaminated greater than 10 million folks and killed greater than 500,000 worldwide.

However, some research counsel it may have been circulating a lot earlier after crossing the species barrier from horseshoe bats native not solely to southwest China, but in addition Laos and Myanmar.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)