TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) on Monday (Dec. 19) announced its first imported case of the Omicron subvariant BF.7 from China.

During a press conference that afternoon, Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy head of the CECC's medical response division, said that amid concerns that the spike in COVID cases in China could lead to the creation of new COVID variants, the center had detected two imported cases from China over the past week. Lo said that one case was infected with the subvariant BF.7, while the other was diagnosed with the more common BA.5.

Lo said that the first case was a Taiwanese citizen who reported experiencing suspected symptoms of COVID. After testing positive for the virus, genetic sequencing determined that the Taiwanese national had been infected with BF.7.

According to Lo, the findings were consistent with the CECC's estimate that the most common Omicron subvariants currently circulating in China are BA.5 and BF.7. Lo said that BF.7 is particularly prevalent in and around Beijing, while BA.5 is more common in other parts of the country.

Thus far, Lo said that the CECC has yet to discover any new variants emerging from China. Even so, Lo pledged that the center will continue to carefully monitor the situation with variants in China.

According to Chinese state-run newspaper, the Beijing Daily, BF.7 has become the dominant subvariant in Beijing and has the "strongest infection ability" among the Omicron subvariants currently prevalent in China.