OREANDA-NEWS. The source of the local outbreak in the Chinese city of Nanjing, which has already spread to 26 cities within the country, was an Air China flight that arrived from Moscow on July 10, Ding Jie, deputy head of the Nanjing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Friday.

“We have already completed the genome sequencing of the 52 infections associated with this outbreak, in all cases the delta strain, the virus genome sequence is highly similar, which means the same transmission chain. of the aircraft coincides with the sequence of the imported case detected on flight CA910 from Russia on July 10, "Ding Jie said at the briefing.

The inspection showed that sick workers were cleaning the cabin of this flight, possibly due to insufficient personal protection measures or contact with a contaminated environment, an infection occurred. In addition, the airline recruited the same workers to clean both international and domestic flights, thus there was a cluster infection among the airport cleaners, and then other employees who had contact with them became infected.

The first cases of infection at Nanjing International Airport were detected on July 20 in nine workers during regular testing. The authorities decided to conduct mass testing of the entire population of the city, to date, 184 cases of infection have been identified in the city.

The outbreak has already spread to 26 cities in 15 provinces in China.