Pictured on December 28, 2022, a gymnasium converted into a fever clinic in Fuzhou, Fujian Province.
Wang Dongming | Chinese news site | Getty Images
BEIJING — A new dangerous variant of Covid-19 is unlikely to spread in China, said Dr. Chris Murray, director of the Seattle-based Washington University health research center.
His Friday comments on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” come as U.S. health officials warned this week concerning the possibility of a new Covid variant emerging in a nationwide outbreak in China – and the way Beijing’s lack of transparency could delay detection public health risks.
Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, identified that there have likely been billions of omicron infections world wide this 12 months, but no new variant of Covid has emerged, only subvariants of the omicron.
“Subsequently, the risk of a new, dangerous variant emerging in China is quite low,” he said. He noted that “some very special features” can be needed for a new variant to emerge and replace the omicron.
The variant was first detected in South Africa over a 12 months ago. Omicron is rather more infectious but causes less serious illness than when Covid first emerged in Wuhan, China in late 2019.
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Unlike most countries in the world, the Chinese Covid-19 wave this month affects a population of 1.4 billion people, most of whom are infected for the primary time. Only national vaccines are widely available to residents.
Beijing has suddenly eased many Covid-related traffic restrictions this month. On Monday, authorities also said they might lift the arrival quarantine from January 8, while resuming passport processing for Chinese nationals wishing to travel abroad for tourism.
This week, the US, Japan and a number of other other countries subsequently announced new Covid testing requirements for travelers from China.
The need for hospitalization, data on deaths
Murray said a total travel ban, if proposed, “wouldn’t make sense” and that it “wouldn’t introduce testing requirements”.
“The argument is being made that we’d like more transparency about what is going on on in China,” Murray said.
“The earliest sign of a new variant will actually be a change in Covid-related hospitalization or mortality, not only multiple infections, as we all know omicron does,” he said.
China’s National Health Commission said on Sunday that it could stop publishing day by day information on Covid infections and deaths. Nonetheless, the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention keeps day by day reports – which, together with hospital discharges, show only hundreds of new Covid infections per day and a handful of deaths. Covid testing is now not mandatory in China.
Communications on the Chinese Center for Disease Control’s website show that its director Shen Hongbing held online meetings this month along with his US counterpart and the top of the UK’s Health Security Agency.
Covid risk
As for the speculation that viruses adapt to maintain their hosts alive, Murray warned that “it holds true for quite a long period of time, not months or years.”
Genomic studies show that it is still possible for a mutation to emerge that causes more severe disease, Murray said. “I believe it could be unreasonable to assume that each one variants can be omicron-like.”
AND study published in Nature Medicine in November it was also found that contracting Covid-19 greater than once increases the risk of organ failure and death.