On January 30, at a press conference held by the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council, Chen Cao, a researcher at the Institute of Viral Diseases of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that since the outbreak of the new coronavirus infection, our country has been carrying out monitoring of the mutant strain of the new coronavirus. The traceability of the early epidemic situation provided important clues and support. At the same time, this process has accumulated a lot of experience and data. According to monitoring data, BA.5.2 and BF.7 are the main epidemic strains in this round of the epidemic, and no other dominant virus strains have been detected so far. During the Spring Festival holiday, 1,421 genome sequences of the new coronavirus were reported from various provinces across the country. After analysis, it was found that they had 11 evolutionary branches, still dominated by BA.5.2 and BF.7, and no new mutant strains were found.
Chen Cao said that the current Spring Festival travel season is underway, and colleges and universities will start school one after another in the near future. The next step will continue to guide the country to do a good job in monitoring the mutation of the new coronavirus, and continue to monitor outpatient (emergency) cases, severe cases, and death cases in sentinel hospitals. There are also special populations to carry out mutation monitoring of the new coronavirus. At the same time, together with other departments, we will monitor the mutation of the new coronavirus for the entry personnel at sea, land and air ports, give timely warning and take corresponding prevention and control measures.
