Omicron has breached the political, financial and technology centres of China for the first time, putting pressure on the country’s response to the more transmissible variant as it awaits the Winter Olympics starting in less than three weeks.
China has detected locally-transmitted Omicron infections in the capital Beijing, the financial centre Shanghai, and Guangdong, where the southern technology center of Shenzhen is located, which together account for one-fifth of the country’s gross domestic product. The highly mutated strain has been detected in one out of every five provinces, while 14 of them have reported imported cases.
