Could the surge of COVID-19 in China unleash a new mutant of the coronavirus on the world?
Scientists don’t know, but they worry it could. It may be similar to the omicron variants floating around out there now. It can be a combination of strains. Or something completely different, they say.
“China has a very large population and has limited immunity. And that seems to be the environment in which we might see an explosion of a new variant,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University.
Each new infection offers a chance for the coronavirus to mutate, and the virus is spreading rapidly in China. The country of 1.4 billion people has largely abandoned its “zero COVID” policy. Although overall reported vaccination rates are high, booster rates are lower, especially among older people. Native vaccines have proven less effective against serious infections than Western RNA versions. Many of them were given more than a year ago, which means immunity has faded.
Result? Fertile ground for virus change.
“When we’ve seen large waves of infection, it’s often followed by the generation of new variants,” Ray said.
About three years ago, the original version of the coronavirus spread from China to the rest of the world and was eventually replaced by the delta variant, then the omicron and its descendants, which continue to plague the world today.
Dr. Shan-Lu Liu, who studies viruses at Ohio State University, said many existing omicron variants have been discovered in China, including BF.7, which is extremely adept at evading immunity and is believed to be growth-promoting. current.
Experts said a partially immunized population like China’s puts particular pressure on the virus to change. Ray compared the virus to a boxer who “learns to avoid the skills you have and adapt to overcome them.”
A big unknown is whether a new variant will cause more severe disease. Experts say there is no inherent biological reason the virus should become milder over time.
“Most of the mildness we’ve experienced over the last six to 12 months in many parts of the world has been due to accumulated immunity either through vaccination or infection, not because the virus has changed” in severity, Ray said.
In China, most people have never been exposed to the coronavirus. China’s vaccines rely on an older technology that produces fewer antibodies than RNA vaccines.
Considering these realities, Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, said it remains to be seen whether the virus will follow the same pattern of evolution in China as it did in the rest of the world after vaccines emerged. “Or,” she asked, “will the pattern of evolution be completely different?”
Recently, the World Health Organization expressed concern about reports of serious illnesses in China. Around the cities of Baoding and Langfang outside Beijing, hospitals have run out of intensive care beds and staff as serious cases have increased.
China’s plan to track the virus centers around three city hospitals in each province, where samples will be collected from patients who are very sick and those who die each week, said Xu Wenbo of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Diseases at a conference on Tuesday.
He said 50 of the 130 omicron versions discovered in China had resulted in explosions. The country is creating a national genetic database “to monitor in real time” how different strains were evolving and the potential implications for public health, he said.
At this point, however, there is limited information about the viral genetic sequence coming from China, said Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
“We don’t know all of what’s going on,” Luban said. But clearly, “the pandemic is not over”.
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AP video producer Olivia Zhang and reporter Dake Kang in Beijing contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science Media and Education Group. AP is solely responsible for all content.
