All 51 Cases in Beijing Sequenced as Omicron

On May 1, Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of The Beijing Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention and a member of the National COVID-19 expert group, introduced that the Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention sequenced the whole genomes of 51 newly infected samples, including 303, 323 and 342, at the 321st press conference on COVID-19 prevention and control in Beijing. The results indicated that all the viruses belonged to omicron variant strains and were highly homologous with the virus sequences of the cluster epidemic in Chaoyang district.

Up to now, 158 locally infected samples have been sequenced since April 22, and sequence comparison results indicate that there are two independent transmission chains in The city, which are completely consistent with the sequence of the recent cluster of cases outside Beijing and the virus spilled to other provinces and cities.