Omicron cases linked to North America

The first individuals in Beijing and Shenzhen infected with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 both had contact with parcels from North America, health authorities from the two cities said on Jan 17.

Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, reported its first case of the Omicron variant on Jan 16.

The city’s center for disease control and prevention said that the individual was not in the same transmission chain as other domestic Omicron cases or previous imported cases in Shenzhen.

But the virus strain involved was homologous to the genomes from North America in the global database.

The infected individual, who worked in the cold chain industry, had touched packages from North America on Jan 12.

Gene sequence analysis had shown that the genome of the first Omicron case in Beijing, reported on Jan 15, was highly similar to the strains detected in North America and Singapore.