Covid-19 returns, again: China may witness a new wave, 65 mn infections a week
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Barely 20 days after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that Covid-19 is no longer a public health emergency, China, the epicenter of the pandemic, is bracing for a fresh wave which may peak with 65 million infections per week by June-end.
According to a media report on Wednesday, a new Omicron sub-variant, XBB, might infect up to 40 million people per week by the end of May before peaking at 65 million a month later.
This comes nearly six months after Beijing, under extreme pressure from widespread demonstrations, relaxed over two-year-old Zero Covid restrictions in November 2022. The newfound freedom, and the celebrations of the Chinese New Year on January 22, 2023, allowed the virus to spread rapidly among the country’s 1.4 billion people.
As China also learned to ‘live with the virus’ and refused to provide updates, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention stopped updating its weekly statistics earlier this month, leaving many questions about the true impact of Covid-19 in that country.
Zhong Nanshan, a leading respiratory disease expert, who predicted the fresh XBB infections at a biotech conference in Guangzhou, provided a rare glimpse into the potential impact of this variant, which has been fueling a resurgence in cases across China since late April.
But this latest wave of infections might be less virulent than the previous wave that hit China between October 2022 and January 2023. A different Omicron sub-lineage may have infected 37 million people every day, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums and causing residents to scramble for limited supplies of fever medicine.
Sensing the new XBB threat, Beijing is now stockpiling vaccines specifically targeting XBB. China’s drug regulator has already given preliminary approval to two such vaccines, with another three or four expected to be cleared soon. “We can lead the pack internationally in developing more effective vaccines,” Zhong said.
A WHO advisory group recently recommended that Covid-19 booster shots should be updated to target one of the currently dominant XBB variants. New formulations should aim to produce antibody responses to the XBB.1.5 or XBB.1.16 variants, and other formulations or platforms that achieve neutralizing antibody responses against XBB lineages could also be considered, the media reported.
Some leading vaccine makers like Moderna, Pfizer/BioNtech, and Novavax are currently developing new versions of their respective vaccines targeting XBB.1.5 and other circulating strains.
The US Food and Drug Administration has called a meeting of outside experts in June to discuss the strain compositions of Covid-19 vaccines for later this year. Vaccine makers could update their shots once the strains are selected.
Recently, WHO’s Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the 76th World Health Assembly that the end of Covid-19 as a global health emergency did not mean its end as a global health threat. He also outlined the need for greater surveillance, preparedness, and response measures.
He said the virus, which was declared a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, is here to stay: “It is still killing and it is still changing. The risk remains of new variants emerging that cause new surges in cases and deaths.”
According to the WHO’s Coronavirus Dashboard, which has collated key statistics since the pandemic’s outbreak in January 2020, the cumulative cases worldwide now stand at over 765 million, with nearly seven million deaths.
As of April 30, 2023, over 13.3 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide.
