Anti-epidemic staff work at a lockdown community in Luohu district, Shenzhen on January 12, 2022. Photo: VCG

Shenzhen, in South China's Guangdong Province, reported two new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, including one infection with the Omicron variant which is not linked to previous transmission chains in the city.

The patient infected with Omicron is a 21-year-old woman who works in a company collecting and delivering overseas frozen chemical reagents in Shenzhen's Longgang district. 

The case was detected during the third round of nucleic acid testing and showed mild symptoms.

The woman's case belongs to a new transmission chain that is not linked to the other 16 cases reported in Shenzhen in the latest outbreak, Lin Hancheng, an official from the Shenzhen Health Commission, said at a press conference on Sunday. 

The other case reported on Sunday came positive for the Delta variant and perfectly matches the sequence of two previous cases. 

Zhongshan and Zhuhai in Guangdong Province, on Sunday saw one and two new COVID-19 cases, respectively. 

Zhuhai has reported nine confirmed cases and one asymptomatic infection as of Sunday afternoon. The city is to carry out city-wide nucleic acid testing for three consecutive days starting from Sunday.

The new case in Zhongshan was identified as Omicron variant and on the same chain of transmission with the eight infections previously found in Zhuhai.

As Guangdong becomes a new hot spot of the outbreak in China, Xi'an, in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, the city that experienced China's most severe outbreak of COVID-19 since Wuhan in early 2020, is gradually coming back to life. 

Xi'an reported only one case on Sunday, recording single digits of daily cases for the fifth consecutive day. A total of 2,044 local cases have been reported in the city in the latest outbreak as of Saturday midnight. 

The epidemic in Xi'an has entered its final phase according to Xi'an epidemic prevention and control authorities. Some streets and communities in the city have been completely or partially lifted from lockdown and control.