Chinese Scientists Call the World Not to Worry About the Emergence of a New COVID-19 Variant

Illustration of COVID-19 in China. (Wikimedia Commons/Andrii Makukha)

JAKARTA - Leading Chinese scientist George Gao said the world should be calm, not to worry, about the possibility of a new variant of COVID-19 circulating in China.

A paper by Gao and colleagues published in the medical journal 'Lancet' on Wednesday showed no new variants emerged in the early weeks of China's recent outbreak, after the end of the zero-COVID policy that followed a huge wave of infection cases.

"The world should completely calm down from the fear of new variants or special variants circulating (in China)," Gao, professor at the Institute of Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and former head of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Reuters, as quoted on February 9.

The variants that caused the infection in China are the same Omicron sub-variants - BA.5.2 and BF.7 - that also exist elsewhere in the world, he said by email.

The study analyzed 413 new COVID cases in Beijing from November 14 to December 20, 2022. It found that all of them were most likely caused by the existing strain.

It was found that 90 percent of most locally acquired infections were due to the two sub-variants above.

The findings are representative of the entire country, said the authors, citing characteristics of Beijing's population and circulation of the highly transmissible strain of COVID.

China ended more than three years of a strict zero-COVID policy involving city-wide lockdowns, mass testing and extensive quarantines in December, which was followed by a surge of infections in its 1.4 billion population.

A top government scientist said on January 21, that 80 percent of people had been infected and China's CDC repeatedly said that in the past month, continuous monitoring showed no new strain of COVID-19 had been found.

It is known that many countries imposed COVID-19 testing requirements for Chinese travelers after its massive outbreak, citing fears that new variants could emerge and a lack of data, although China said such measures were unjustifiable.

Gao said China was continuing extensive genomic sequencing of the virus, and would identify new variants if they emerged.

He said cases were currently declining, but "a new wave may occur in the future."

The Chinese-funded study on the 'Lancet' was carried out by researchers from the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the CDC and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The authors say there are some limitations to the study, including China's decision to end large-scale mandatory testing.