• On January 8, China will stop practicing mandatory quarantines on arrival in the country.

    The Covid-19 is therefore now free to circulate there.

  • As the number of coronavirus cases explodes and each new infection increases the chances that the virus will mutate, experts fear that China could become a breeding ground for the emergence of new variants.

  • More than 130 new sublineages of the Omicron variant have been detected in China over the past three months, he said last week.

    Among them, XXB and BQ.1 but also BA.5.2 and BF.7 which remain the main strains in circulation.

    And this, while a "soup" of more than 500 new sub-variants of Omicron has been identified in recent months.

On January 8, China will stop practicing mandatory quarantines on arrival in the country, the last bastion of its "zero Covid" policy which has kept the country largely closed to the world since the start of the pandemic.

While the government has stopped publishing daily case counts, officials in several cities estimate that hundreds of thousands of people have recently been infected, while hospitals and crematoria are overwhelmed across the country.

This explosion of Covid-19 cases, as the country lifts its strict measures, could create a potential breeding ground for the emergence of new variants, warn health experts.

Especially since the Chinese population remains poorly vaccinated.

“Potential virus pool could emerge from China”

Each new infection increases the chances that the virus will mutate, estimates Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva: “The fact that 1.4 billion people are suddenly exposed to SARS-CoV- 2 obviously creates conditions conducive to the emergence of variants.

Bruno Lina, professor of virology at the University of Lyon, France, told

La Croix

newspaper  : "Given the intense circulation of the virus, and therefore the increased risk of mutations, a potential breeding ground for viruses could emerge from China.

»


The high contagiousness of this new sub-variant of Omicron could be, according to experts, one of the origins of the explosion of coronavirus cases in China https://t.co/jKJhmQoIQE

— 20 Minutes (@20Minutes) December 27, 2022

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Soumya Swaminathan, who served as the World Health Organization's (WHO) chief scientist until November, also said much of the Chinese population was vulnerable, in part because many older people have not been vaccinated.

“We need to closely monitor any emergence of worrying variants,” she told the

Indian Express

newspaper website .

Monitor new strains in real time

In response to the surge in cases, the United States, Italy, Japan, India and Malaysia announced this week that they would tighten their border controls.

Asked about France Inter on Thursday, Brigitte Autran, president of the Committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks (Covars), however indicated that “border screening has never prevented the virus from entering”.

“If we succeed in sampling and sequencing all the viruses identified in all travelers from China, we will know almost immediately if new variants emerge and spread” in the country, for his part detailed Antoine Flahault.

Xu Wenbo, the head of the virus control institute at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said hospitals across the country will collect samples from patients and upload the sequencing information to a new national database. .

This will allow authorities to monitor new strains in real time.

130 new sublines of the Omicron variant

More than 130 new sublineages of the Omicron variant have been detected in China over the past three months, he said last week.

Among them are XXB and BQ.1 and their own sub-lineages, which have spread across the United States and parts of Europe in recent months as a swarm of sub-variants vie for dominance in the world. entire.



However, BA.5.2 and BF.7 remain the main Omicron strains detected in China, Xu Wenbo said, adding that the different sublineages are likely to co-circulate.

"A soup" of more than 500 new sub-variants of Omicron has been identified in recent months, recalled Antoine Flahault.

"All variants, when more transmissible than previously dominant variants - such as BQ.1, B2.75.2, XBB, CH.1 or BF.7 - definitely represent threats, as they can cause new waves" , said the epidemiologist.

And to conclude: “Today, none of these variants seem to present new particular risks of more serious symptoms, but this could be the case for new variants in the near future.

»

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  • Health

  • China

  • Variant Omicron

  • Covid-19

  • Coronavirus