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SHANGHAI / BEIJING (Reuters) – The first of the latest coronavirus infections in Shanghai emerged from airport cargo handlers cleaning up a container that arrived on a flight from North America, city officials said on Monday, as it struggled. against a wave of cases among airport workers.
The news comes as aviation data provider Variflight noted the cancellation of more than 40% of Monday’s flights at the Chinese business hub’s Pudong airport, one of the world’s busiest and a key gateway for Chinese international flights during the pandemic.
An airport cargo handler was listed in one case reported on November 9, and a colleague in another case reported on November 10, after they both entered and cleaned the container on October 30, said Sun Xiaodong, an official at the airport. Shanghai disease control. .
Neither of them was wearing a mask at the time.
“Research at home and abroad has shown that the coronavirus could live in closed and humid environments,” Sun said at a news conference.
The container was moist inside and sealed outside, Sun said, adding that the virus strain detected in both cases was very similar to that from North America, suggesting the source could be from abroad.
From epidemiological investigations and gene sequencing, Sun said, experts concluded that the source of infection in both cases can be traced to the container they were both exposed to, but did not say whether samples were taken from it.
After five months free from local infections, Shanghai has reported six local cases since November 9, five in recent days, also involving workers handling cargo at the airport and their close contacts.
However, authorities say they have not yet found a link between the first two cases and the most recent ones.
One of the five recent cases involves a security inspector at a UPS logistics center at the airport, while two are UPS employees. UPS was not immediately available for comment outside of US business hours.
Since Sunday, airport officials have examined 17,719 employees in the cargo handling area of Pudong Airport, of whom 11,544 tested negative, but test results for the rest have yet to be issued, Zhou Junlong said. , vice president of the Shanghai Airport Authority.
“The confirmed cases have only been found in the cargo handling area of the airport, and the passenger area of the airport is not affected,” Zhou said at the same briefing.
Zhou said authorities would conduct regular nucleic acid tests for high-risk cargo workers and offer them the use of emergency vaccines on a voluntary basis.
China recorded 11 new infections on Monday, including two local cases in Shanghai, the National Health Commission said. Mainland China’s count stands at 86,442 cases, with the death toll unchanged at 4,634.
(Interactive graphical tracking of the global spread of coronavirus: https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps)
(Reporting by Stella Qiu, Roxanne Liu, and Brenda Goh; Edited by Kim Coghill and Clarence Fernandez)
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