China's new coronavirus mutation 'fertile ground, the epidemic is not over'

A virus expert diagnosed that 'the epidemic is not over' due to concerns about new mutations in Covid-19 from China.
"China has a very large population and limited immunity, so it's an environment where we can see an explosion of new strains," said Johns Hopkins University infectious disease expert Dr Stuart Campbell Ray. The possibility of a new variant was revealed in the highly spreading Chinese Covid situation.
The Associated Press described the Chinese situation as “fertile ground for the virus to change.” “Three years ago, the original version of the coronavirus spread from China to the rest of the world, eventually being replaced by the delta strain, then Omicron and its descendants, and today Edo continues to torment the world.”
On the 25th, it diagnosed the possibility of triggering a coronavirus mutation in China's COVID-19 surge.
Every new infection gives the coronavirus a chance to mutate, and the virus is now spreading rapidly in a country of 1.4 billion, forcing the Chinese government to abandon its "zero COVID" policy.
Vaccination rates in China are high, but booster shot levels are lower, especially among the elderly, and China's vaccines are less effective against serious infections than western-made messenger RNA versions, so most of the Chinese are now immunocompromised from vaccination a year ago and as a result is “fertile ground for the virus to change,” the AP said.
In a briefing, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in a briefing that tracking the virus would focus on hospitals in three cities in each province, collecting samples from critically ill patients and all those who die each week, 50 of the 130 Omicron versions found in China caused the outbreak. said, and revealed the status of the 'monitoring database'.
"At this point, there is limited information about sequencing genetic viruses coming out of China," Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, told The Associated Press.
Dr. Shanlu Liu, a virologist at The Ohio State University, said: “We are very good at immune evading BF.7, which is believed to be driving the current surge.
"It remains to be seen whether the virus will follow the same evolutionary pattern in China as it does in the rest of the world after a vaccine is available," said Gagandeep Kang, a virologist at the Christian Medical University in India. did.
Virologists assert that there is no inherent biological reason for the virus to become milder over time, saying that a "partially immune population" in China puts special pressure on the virus to make changes.
Dr. Ray of Hopkins University likened the virus to "a boxer who learns to avoid the skills you have and adapt to overcome them" "It's not because the virus has changed in severity, it's because of immunity built up through vaccination or infection, so when you see a big wave of infections, new strains are often created."

In a phone interview with Bloomberg on the 25th, Peter Bogner, CEO of the International Influenza Information Sharing Organization (GISAID), said, “Last month, Chinese authorities tested 25 genetic samples collected from Beijing, Inner Mongolia, and Guangzhou, and In the sample, a sub-variant of BA.5.2 Omicron was identified, and it is estimated that the BF.7 variant spread in Inner Mongolia and then spread to Beijing.”

After the implementation of China's zero-corona policy, on the 25th of this month, the Guangzhou Funeral Service Center said through Weixin's official account that it was "a measure due to the increase in work" and that "funeral services such as funeral services will be temporarily suspended until January 10 next year. Separate ceremonies such as funeral ceremonies It is possible to just cremate the body without it," he said, explaining the spike in deaths in December.

On the 25th, the Chinese government announced the cancellation of the daily announcement of the number of corona infections.
The Chinese government stopped announcing the number of asymptomatic infections on the 14th, saying that it was difficult to identify due to the cancellation of large-scale PCR tests.
Zhejiang Province announced at a press conference on the 25th that the number of newly infected people exceeded 1 million a day.
A health official in Qingdao, Shandong Province, said on the 23rd that the number of new infections is around 490,000 to 530,000 per day.
The number of new infections on the 23rd, officially announced by the Chinese government on the 24th, was 4,100.

Fuji Levio, a Japanese test reagent manufacturer, starts selling antigen test kits that can simultaneously check coronavirus and flu influenza on the Internet from the 26th, and will be sold at pharmacies early next year.
The product was approved by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare as the first simultaneous test kit in early December and allowed for general sale.
By collecting mucus near the entrance of the nose with a cotton swab and examining it, the presence or absence of new corona and influenza infection is determined after 20 minutes. The price is about 2,000 to 2,500 yen per dose.