An employee works at a Sinopec gas station in Southwest China's Yunnan Province in February. Photo: IC

Nine employees from Chinese oil giant Sinopec working in Kuwait were found to have contracted COVID-19 on Saturday after they returned to China on a chartered flight on Friday. 

One of them was confirmed to have COVID-19 and another eight were diagnosed as asymptomatic patients, according to the health authority in Qingdao, a coastal city in East China's Shandong Province on Sunday. 

The nine Sinopec employees took chartered flight CA042 from Kuwait to Qingdao on Friday. 

Those who took the same chartered flight were sent to quarantine upon arrival. A total of 350 close contacts on the flight are currently under medical observation. 

As of Saturday, Kuwait reported a total of 58,221 cases and 404 deaths from COVID-19. 

A previous report in June said that vaccination priority will be given to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) workers carrying out overseas business activity regularly or for long periods. 

Employees of SOEs preparing to go abroad are offered two choices of homegrown inactivated vaccine shots for urgent use, which were developed, respectively, by Beijing Biological Products Institute and Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, both affiliated to China National Pharmaceutical Group.

The vaccination offer is believed not only to protect Chinese overseas from infection but also to help provide more valuable data for a global reference of the vaccine's efficacy. 

Global Times