Beijing identifies source of virus cluster

The Beijing health authority announced on Wednesday that the source of the infection cluster in the city's Chaoyang district came from Hong Kong and is not the same source that was responsible for the cluster of infections in Shunyi district, where most cases in the city were found recently.

At a news conference, Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the source is the one reported on Dec 14 that was transmitted to three other people.

"The investigation of the virus samples from the cases and environment showed that the virus is not genetically related to Beijing's local cases in past months, nor did it come from the United Kingdom or South Africa," she said.

Last month, the center said the cluster of local confirmed coronavirus cases in Beijing's Shunyi district had been imported from an asymptomatic carrier from Indonesia, based on the epidemiological investigation and genomic sequencing.

Pang also announced on Wednesday that the Hanting Hotel in the Dashanzi area, where the cases were identified in Chaoyang district, has been designated as a low-risk area since Wednesday, since there was no new local case there in the past 14 days.