Shenzhou International, a major garment processing plant supplying global sports and leisure brands in Ningbo, East China’s Zhejiang Province, was listed as a medium-risk region as workers at the company were confirmed to have contracted the coronavirus.
After seven cases at Shenzhou International were reported on Saturday, three more were detected in Ningbo on Sunday, local health authorities told a press conference.
The cases reported were highly localized in the Shenzhou International company, and no additional cases have been detected in other parts of Zhejiang thus far, local health authorities said.
On Saturday, health authorities said that the genome sequencing of the first case found in Beilun, Ningbo showed the virus strain is highly similar to the Delta variant found in Vietnam, but different to the evolutionary branch of the Delta variant found in previous cases in Zhejiang, Xi’an, the capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province and Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in Southwest China's Yunnan.
Regarding the newly detected cases, the Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan, one of the world's busiest cargo hubs, said it entered a state of emergency and will maintain normal operations in order to ensure the logistics for foreign trade goods and stabilize supply chains.
"At present, the productions at every area in the port are stable and vessels arriving at the port operate normally," the port said in a statement.
Ningbo, a city about 3,000-4,000 kilometers away from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam by air and one of the richest cities in China, saw a coronavirus outbreak at the end of 2021. Local authorities said the new cases were irrelevant to the previous outbreak.