China’s new COVID crisis could create the worst variants ever

The COVID wave Crash across China Not only is it threatening one and a half billion Chinese now, but it also poses a serious danger to other parts of the world.

Aside from the risks to the already vulnerable global supply chain, the surge in infections in China Sufficient opportunity for SARS-CoV-2 pathogens to mutate To some new and more dangerous variants. If that happens, the world’s progress in COVID since the widespread availability of vaccines in late 2020 could be slow, if not reversed.

John Swartsburg, an emeritus professor of infectious diseases and vaccines at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, told The Daily Beast: “If that happens, people will experience a significant amount of viral replication, which will increase the likelihood that problematic variants will be produced,” Swartsburg added.

Experts are divided on how likely it is that the next major variant, “lineage,” is a scientific term. Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong, said the next major strain could come from a country where the virus has already wiped out the population.Europe, an example, and the United States

However, it has its own dynamics that increase the likelihood that the new SARS-CoV-2 strain will emerge in China. China’s population is huge and can be much less protected against infections and viral mutations than, for example, Americans and Europeans.

This disparity is part of China’s early success with COVID. For more than two years, the Chinese government and health agencies have managed to control the new coronavirus. This is despite the fact that the pathogen may have occurred in the Wuhan meat market in central eastern China in late 2019.

Thanks to China’s congestion and frequent strict restrictions on daily travel, China has spent two years virtually without COVID. Yes, there were tens of thousands of cases across the vast country during the first wave of infection in the spring of 2020. But after that, there was almost nothing. Very few cases of 150 or so new infectious authorities logged in in mid-January 2021 were considered a surge.

Getty Images Costfoto / Future Publishing

Then Omicron came. The new strain, which first appeared in South Africa last fall, is by far the most contagious. Some experts have described the early morphology of the BA.1 sublineage Omicron as the most contagious respiratory virus ever seen. Human cells.

BA.2 sublineage Immediate replacements for BA.1 are even worse and can be 80% more contagious than BA.1.There is also Very rare “recombinant” type Omicron Called XE, it combines the qualities of BA.1 and BA.2 and may be 10% more capable than BA.2.

BA.1 and BA.2 shrugged China’s strict social distance. Even the most fleeting contacts between family, neighbors and colleagues were enough to ignite a viral fire in China starting in January.

Omicron first struck a city in the south of Hong Kong, and a few weeks later it struck Shenzhen. Later, the waves of Omicron spread further north to Shanghai, imposing one of the toughest and most controversial blockades to date.

The virus continued to spread. Officials by early April Was logging An average of about 15,000 new cases per day. The rapid increase in deaths continued. In Hong Kong alone, nearly 9,000 people have died since mid-February. To be clear, it is only part of the infections and deaths aggregated by less restrictive countries during the worst of their COVID surges.What I am very worried about in China Trend— And the chances of cases and death continue to rise.

And not everyone trusts the official number. Chinese cities other than Hong Kong have not yet reported the death of COVID from the current wave, and some experts say the Beijing government has deliberately postponed the data to hide the extent of the crisis. I’m asking you. “I’m skeptical of the reported mortality rates in China,” said Peter Collignon, an infectious disease expert at the Australian National University School of Medicine. Told Bloomberg..

Paul Tambia, chairman of Singapore’s Asia-Pacific Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, said The Daily Beast may have underreported by health authorities, but perhaps our understanding of the outbreak in China. Not enough to truly change. “The active Chinese social media scene, which broadcasts images of individuals rubbing under blockade restrictions, is unlikely to have missed a number of serious incidents and deaths,” Tambiya said.

Still, the wave of COVID in China is bad and worse, while in many parts of the world, cases remain at their lowest levels in a year. apart from BA.2 will be the dominant sublineage almost everywhere.

“Mainly because the Chinese population did not achieve high levels of innate immunity, there may be a resurgence in China, including the emergence and spread of new sub-strains,” said the Global Health Infection Center. Edwin Michael, an epidemiologist of the United States, said. A disease study at the University of South Florida told The Daily Beast.

If no one is exposed to the virus, it is not possible to build a natural antibody across a large population. This is the drawback of a complete blockade. Antibodies in recovered COVID patients provide strong immunity and, when combined with vaccination of a large group of people, help mitigate the effects of new strains. Michael said he believes that innate immunity is stronger and lasts longer than the immunity that results from the best messenger RNA vaccines.

Daily Chinese do not have access to mRNA jabs. Chinese officials have loudly criticized and subsequently banned Western-made vaccines, apparently to protect the locally-made jab market. However, experts are divided on how effective and long-lasting China’s domestic Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines are. Tambyah said there is enough data to conclude that the Chinese shot is “very effective in preventing severe illness and death.”

Michael said he didn’t agree. “They also used inactivated viruses in the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, which I expect to be more potent than the mRNA vaccine in that they generate a more diverse immune response that can counter new variants. was doing. etc“Michael said. “But apparently this reaction has weakened and people are more likely to be infected with the new strain again.”

However, even if they are reasonably effective, vaccines are unevenly distributed in China. Government attacks on foreign jabs have had the effect of encouraging anti-vax attitudes, especially among older Chinese who may be less familiar with the media than younger Chinese. In other words, while 85% of all Chinese are jabbed, Only half of the most vulnerable age groups– Over 80 years old – are fully vaccinated. In addition to this, the lack of innate immunity exposes millions of Chinese to an aggressive lineage that can break through the blockade.

Not only are millions of Chinese at risk of serious illness and death, but they are also potential incubators of potentially exacerbated forms of SARS-CoV-2. “Any place can be a source of new variants, but most likely where the level of artificial immunity is low and the spread of the virus is uncontrolled,” said the Johns Hopkins Health Security Center. Ameshua Darha, a public health expert, said. The Daily Beast.

Photographs by Ben Marance / SOPA Images / Light Rocket via Getty Images

Last year, Niema Mosiri, a geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, told The Daily Beast that individual infections that weren’t checked for antibodies tended to cause two mutations every two weeks.

“What if 50 million people pull the levers of slot machines at the same time?” Mosiri asked. “We expect at least one person to hit the jackpot pretty quickly. Now, replace the slot machine with a” clinically meaningful SARS-CoV-2 mutation. ” That is our current situation. “

This means that the higher the COVID rate in the world’s most populous country, the more likely it is that the next major pedigree will be Chinese. Of course, new strains are inevitable from some country. The secret is to slow down the rate of mutations so that fresh vaccine prescribing, treatment, and public health policies can at least keep up with major changes in the virus.

This is difficult to do if the pathogen is rapidly spreading in a country of 1.5 billion people with potentially low quality jab vaccination rates and little innate immunity to back up shots.

The Chinese meat market seems to have been the first “laboratory” of SARS-CoV-2. The whole world is now struggling until the virus spreads and can mutate in the first place and becomes a fast-moving, deadly pathogen. Some Chinese cities are blocked but ripe for viral infections, which could lead to laboratories for the next major form of the same pathogen. It is more likely to be transmitted than BA.2. Alternatively, it may be capable of avoiding natural and vaccine-induced antibodies.It may have both Dangerous nature.

Anyway, that pedigree could extend the pandemic to the fourth year, whether it first appeared in China or elsewhere.