Taken on December 28, 2022, this photo shows a gymnasium converted into a fever clinic in Fuzhou, Fujian province.
Wang Dongming | China News Service | Getty Images
BEIJING — A dangerous new Covid-19 variant is unlikely to be circulating in China, said Dr. Chris Murray, director of the Seattle-based Center for Health Research at the University of Washington.
CNBC’s “squawk box asiaIt came this week when U.S. health officials warned about the possible emergence of a new Covid variant in China’s nationwide epidemic — and how Lack of transparency in Beijing Detection of public health risks may be delayed.
Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, noted that there were likely billions of Omicron infections worldwide this year, but no new Covid variants have emerged. Only Omicron subvariants have appeared.
“Therefore, we believe the risk of a dangerous new variant to exist in China is very low,” he said. He pointed out that a new variant would need “some very special properties” to replace omicron as it emerges.
This variant was first detected in South Africa over a year ago. Omicron is much more contagious than when Covid first appeared in Wuhan, China in late 2019, but it doesn’t cause serious illness.
Unlike most of the world, China’s Covid wave this month has affected a population of 1.4 billion people, mostly infected for the first time. Only domestically manufactured vaccines are widely available to the local population.
Beijing suddenly eased many of its Covid-related travel restrictions this month.On Monday, officials also said they would Abolition of inbound quarantine from January 8while resuming passport processing for Chinese citizens wishing to travel abroad for tourism.
This week, the US, Japan, and several other countries have since announced New Covid Testing Requirements For travelers from China.
Need for hospitalization, mortality data
Mr Murray said a proposal for a complete travel ban “would make no sense” and said he was “not going to include testing requirements”.
“There’s been an argument that we need more transparency about what’s going on in China,” Murray said.
“The first signs of some new variants will actually be changes in Covid-related hospitalizations or mortality, as well as many infections.
China’s National Health Commission said on Sunday it would stop publishing daily information on Covid infections and deaths. However, the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains daily reports showing only thousands of new Covid infections and a handful of deaths per day, including those discharged. Covid testing is no longer mandatory in China.
Its director, Shen Hongbin, held an online meeting earlier this month with his US counterparts and the head of the UK’s Health Security Agency, according to a release on the China Center for Disease Control’s website.
COVID-19 risk
Regarding the theory that the virus adapts to keep the host alive, Murray cautioned that it “applies over a fairly long period of time, not months or years.”
Genomic studies show that mutations that cause more serious diseases could still emerge, Murray said. I think.”
a Research published in Nature Medicine In November, it was also found that having two or more Covid-19 infections increases the risk of organ failure and death.
