Over 400 Flights Cancelled at Shenzhen Airport After Restaurant Staff Reportedly Test Positive for COVID-19

By Global Times

Jun 18, 2021 08:58 PM

A flight information platform said on Friday the Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport in South China's Guangdong Province has cancelled more than 400 flights, after a staff at a restaurant in the airport reportedly tested positive for COVID-19. 

As of 14:25 on Friday, the cancelled arriving and departing flights (including the cancellations on Friday and cancellations in advance) accounted for around 40 percent of the total number of flights at the airport, flight information platform VariFlight told the Global Times on Friday.       

According to a notice issued by the Shenzhen airport epidemic prevention and control office obtained by the Global Times, a staff at a restaurant in the airport tested positive for the virus, despite the person being vaccinated twice in January and February.

The staff previously tested negative on June 1, 7, 9 and 15. 

The airport has asked 56 staff working at the same restaurant to go into quarantine, the notice said, warning of the possibility it would cancel more flights. The airport has closed all stores and started the third round of mass nucleic acid testing. 

The Shenzhen Municipal Health Commission has not revealed new information about the reported case at the airport as of the press time. 

However, Shenzhen airport on Friday afternoon said airline operation remained normal. It had scheduled 780 inbound and outbound flights and cancelled 63 flights as of 4:30 pm on Friday.

Shenzhen, a tech hub in South China, saw COVID-19 flare-ups in the city's port earlier this month. Its neighbor city, Guangzhou, also the capital city of Guangdong, saw 147 domestically-transmitted COVID-19 cases from May 21 to Monday. 

Among those infected people include some who have been vaccinated. On these infections, a local expert explained with three main reasons. 

For some people, the vaccines may fail to trigger the relevant immune system reactions; for others, their immune systems may not have enough time to produce the necessary antibodies to fight infections, Ma Wenjun, an expert at an advisory committee of Guangdong Preventive Medicine Association said. 

Thirdly, it is possible that they are infected with the new mutant virus that can bypass existing vaccines, Ma said. 

Global Times