China added more than 13,000 new COVID-19 infections with state media reporting a case infected with a new subtype of the omicron variant.
The new iteration of the virus, isolated from a mild COVID-19 patient in a city less than 43 miles from Shanghai, evolves from the BA.1.1 branch of the omicron variant, Global Times reported, citing sequencing data from local health authorities. The report said the subtype doesn’t match other coronavirus that’s causing COVID-19 in China nor those submitted to GISAID, where scientists around the world share the coronavirus they sequenced as a way to monitor mutations.
A case in Dalian city in northern China reported on Friday also didn’t match any coronavirus found domestically, the municipal government said on its WeChat account.
