The authorities have shut down parts of a district in the capital of Guangdong. Several streets in Guangzhou city’s Liwan district and some businesses were shut, while public transport links were suspended.
The local infections found in Guangdong since May 21 have shown a high similarity with the highly contagious COVID-19 variant found in India and the UK according to their genome sequences, officials said on Sunday.
The capital city of Guangzhou has logged five new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 21 asymptomatic infections since May 21. Thirteen asymptomatic cases have been found in Shenzhen during a recent resurgence of COVID-19 infections.
Chen Bin, vice director of the provincial health commission, said that all the locally transmitted cases found in Guangzhou are linked to the B.1.617 variant first found in India.
Shenzhen health commission said the infection chain in the city started from a worker handling international cargoes at the Yantian Port, and most of the patients are infected with the B.1.1.7 variant first found in the UK.
Most of the latest infections in Guangzhou are believed to be linked to a 75-year-old woman who was confirmed on May 21 to have the virus. Most of the others attended a dinner with her or live together.
The spread of infections in Guangzhou was "fast and strong," said Jiang Qingwu, a professor at Fudan University's School of Public Health.
Guangzhou, a business and industrial center of 15 million people, on Sunday required people leaving the city to have a negative result of nucleic acid test done within three days.
