Chinese health authorities are racing to detect new mutant strains of COVID as more than a third of Omicron variants detected in the crushing wave of infections that swept the country have led to larger outbreaks.
Over the past three months, China has detected more than 130 Omicron subtypes, including BF.7, a variant incredibly adept at evading immunity and believed to be responsible for the current surge in infections.
Xu Wenbo, director of the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, said last week that China plans to monitor virus centers in three urban hospitals in each province. There, samples will be taken from sick patients without an appointment, as well as from patients who die.
Wenbo confirmed that 50 of the 130 versions of Omicron found in China had caused outbreaks.
He said the country is working to create a national genetic database so it can track the evolution of each strain and study each mutation’s potential impacts on public health.
Each new infection creates a new opportunity for the virus to mutate. With the rapid spread of COVID in China, up to 248 million people, nearly 18% of China’s population, contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December.
The country of 1.4 billion made a complete reversal of its “zero COVID” policy earlier this month. The abrupt policy change caused the largest outbreak of COVID infections in China since the start of the pandemic, and left hospitals overwhelmed, refusing ambulances and unable to treat some critically ill patients.
About 37 million people may have contracted COVID-19 in China on December 20 alone.
While vaccination rates are high, booster levels, particularly among the elderly, are lower. Many received the vaccine more than a year ago, which means their immunity has declined.
Experts warn that a partially immune population like China’s could cause the virus to adapt and create new mutations.
Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University, likened the virus to a boxer who “learns to evade the abilities it has and adapts to get around them.”
“When we’ve seen large waves of infection, new variants are often spawned,” Ray said.
It is unclear whether a new variant will cause more severe and worse diseases in those infected, particularly in China, as the country suffers a massive surge in infections.
Health experts have warned that there is no biological reason for the virus to get milder over time and for severe disease to continue to spread. “Much of the mildness we’ve experienced over the past 6 to 12 months in many parts of the world is due to immunity built up through vaccination or infection, not because the virus has changed” in severity, Ray said…
