The world fears an explosion of infections and a soup of Covid variants due to the end of restrictions in China

An explosion of Covid-19 infections in China after the lifting of sanitary restrictions threatens to create a “potential breeding ground” for new variants of the virus, health experts have warned.

China’s National Health Commission stopped publishing the daily number of cases, but authorities in several cities estimate that hundreds of thousands of people have been infected in recent weeks, while hospitals and crematoriums across the country they are overwhelmed.

In Tianjin, some 140 kilometers southwest of Beijing, AFP visited two hospital rooms full of patients with the virus.

China announced this week that travelers from abroad will not have to quarantine from January 8, in the latest reversal of its strict zero-Covid regime that has left the country virtually isolated from the world since the start of the pandemic.

Con the almost free circulation of the virus among a population of 1.4 billionmost lacking the immunity provided by previous infection and many unvaccinated, other countries and experts fear that China is fertile ground for new variants.

Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva, told AFP that each new infection increases the chance that the virus will mutate.

“The fact that 1.4 billion people are suddenly exposed to SARS-CoV-2 obviously creates conditions for emerging variants“Flahault said about the virus that causes Covid-19.

Bruno Lina, a professor of virology at the University of Lyon, told the La Croix newspaper that China would become a “potential breeding ground for the virus.”

In turn, Soumya Swaminathan, who until November was the main scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), pointed out that a large part of the Chinese population is vulnerable to contagion in part because many elderly people have not been vaccinated.

“We need to keep a close eye on any variants of interest,” he told the Indian Express newspaper’s website.

“Soup” of variants

For his part, Xu Wenbo, director of viral control at the Chinese Center for Disease Control, announced last week that the country’s hospitals would collect samples from patients and upload sequencing information to a new national database, allowing authorities to monitor possible new strains in real time.

More than 130 derivatives of the Omicron variant have been detected in the last three months in China, he told reporters.

Among them are XXB and BQ.1 and their subvariants, which are spreading in the United States and parts of Europe.

But Xu noted that BA.5.2 and BF.7 remain the main Omicron derivatives detected in China.

Flahault noted that “a soup” of more than 500 Omicron subvariants has been identified in recent months, though it’s hard to say where each emerged.

“Any variant when it is more transmissible than the previous dominant, such as BQ.1, B2.75.2, XBB, CH.1 or BF.7, they definitely pose threats because they can cause new waves,” he explained.

“But to our knowledge none of these known variants appear to exhibit particular risks of more severe symptoms, although that could be the case with new variants in the future,” he added.

The United States joined a growing number of countries in imposing restrictions on travelers from China, after Beijing suddenly lifted the biggest impediment to international travel despite a local wave of infections.

Hospitals across China have been overwhelmed by an explosion of coronavirus cases after the dismantlement of the “zero Covid” policy, which contained infections but hit the economy and sparked protests.

In response, several countries such as the United States announced that they would require negative tests for covid-19 to admit visitors from China.

“The recent rapid increase in the transmission of Covid-19 in China increases the potential for the emergence of new variantsof the virus, a senior US health official told reporters.

Beijing has provided limited information on the variants circulating in China, according to the official, and control and reports of new infections have also decreased.

Italy, Japan, India and Malaysia also announced restrictive measures to guard against importing variants from China.

Beijing criticized the “exaggeration, defamation and political manipulation” of the Western press.