CDC: The prevailing strains are still BA.5.2 and BF.7, no new mutant strains have been found

January 31, 2023January 31, 2023

Read Time:1 Minute, 39 Second

On January 30, the State Council Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism held a press conference to introduce the situation related to the prevention and control of the epidemic during the Spring Festival.

At the press conference, a reporter asked, according to the national situation of new coronavirus infection, the report shows that the current prevalent strains are BA.5.2 and BF.7, whether there will be the introduction of new mutant strains? Is the country prepared to deal with the introduction of other viruses?

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Chen Cao, a researcher at the Institute of Viral Diseases of the Chinese CDC, said that since the new coronavirus, China has been carrying out surveillance to provide support for the early flow of the number of sources, a large amount of experience and data has been accumulated during this process. According to our surveillance data, the current round of the epidemic is still mainly BA.5.2 and BF.7 as the main prevalent strains, no other dominant virus strains have been monitored. During the Spring Festival holiday, we received 1,421 whole genome sequences of the new coronavirus reported from all provinces in China, and after analysis, 11 evolutionary branches were found, still dominated by BA.5.2 and BF.7, with no new variant strains found to be imported.

Chen Cao mentioned that, at present, the Spring Festival is underway, universities may also start school one after another in the near future, the next step we will continue to guide the country to do a good job of monitoring the mutation of the new coronavirus, continue to carry out the monitoring of the mutation of the new coronavirus in the sentinel hospital outpatient and emergency medical records, serious medical records, death records and special populations, at the same time, we also work with other departments to monitor the new coronavirus of people entering the sea, land and air ports, timely Early warning and related preventive and control measures.