THE virus strain behind the latest clusters of COVID-19 cases in Nanjing, capital of East China’s Jiangsu Province, has been identified as the highly infectious Delta variant, local authorities said yesterday.

The recent spike in infections in the city can be attributed to the special location of the outbreak and the highly contagious nature of the strain, said Ding Jie, vice director of the city’s center for disease control and prevention, at a press conference.

Nanjing has added more than 100 locally transmitted cases since a few airport workers tested positive for coronavirus last week.

Ding confirmed that the latest outbreak first emerged among airplane cabin cleaners of the Nanjing Lukou International Airport. The virus has since spread through their work environment and social activities.

On Monday, the mainland reported 31 new local cases, all in Nanjing.

So far, the virus cluster in Nanjing has involved airport workers and their contacts, but new infections were also reported among flight passengers in other parts of China who have visited the Nanjing airport.

Nanjing has tightened the epidemic prevention and control measures.

Among the measures, all retail pharmacies in the city suspended selling antipyretic, cough, antiviral and antibiotic medicine to citizens, according to the municipal epidemic prevention and control headquarters.

The city’s major hospitals, excluding emergency departments and fever clinics, were urged to implement appointment registration, while closed venues and offline training services also suspended business.

Nanjing has also built six air-inflated labs to improve its nucleic acid testing capabilities.

The construction of the six “Falcon” testing labs started Sunday. Three of the labs went into operation Monday morning, and the others were completed yesterday.

When all six labs are in use, 180,000 sample tubes can be tested daily, and if mixed sample tests are carried out, 1.8 million people can be screened every day.

Guangdong Province on Thursday reported a new locally transmitted asymptomatic carrier, a flight passenger returning from Nanjing.

Sichuan Province on Saturday also reported a confirmed COVID-19 case in the city of Mianyang, after it launched mass testing among travelers from Nanjing.

On Monday, Liaoning Province reported three asymptomatic cases in the city of Dalian, who had transited via the airport and spent around two hours there.

Nanjing Lukou International Airport is a busy airport that handled more than 30 million passengers in 2019.

Nanjing has launched its second all-inclusive nucleic acid testing campaign and urged residents not to leave the city unless necessary.

(Xinhua)