A recent study report by researchers in Hong Kong titled Modelling the adjustment of COVID-19 response and exit from dynamic zero-COVID in China stated that explosive growth of infection rates in China could also lead to mutations of the virus.
The study is co-authored by Kathy Leung, Gabriel M Leung, and Joseph Wu. Gabriel Leung is the former dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong. (The report was published Wednesday and is a preprint, meaning it hasn’t yet been certified by peer review.)
A reopening that sees a high R rate — the basic reproduction number for the virus — would “result in a large number of infections that could potentially accelerate mutation, selection and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 viruses,” the researchers wrote. SARS-CoV-2 is the coronavirus that causes Covid.
It’s no longer possible to determine China’s R rate after the government stopped releasing numbers of new asymptomatic cases.
As part of efforts to return to normalcy and out of concern for a potential wider outbreak once controls are loosened, China started enforcing a more lenient version of its strict “zero COVID” policy .
The study also suggests that the unregulated lifting of restrictions might cause the death of nearly 10 lakh (1 million) people in China.
Just the day after restrictions were lifted, the nation reported 21,165 new coronavirus cases, but it was not clear if the lower figure reflected fewer infections or a decrease in testing.
The National Health Commission loosened anti-pandemic regulations, including the requirement that a recent COVID-19 test result be shown in order to enter most public places and the use of lockdowns.
The relaxation comes in response to the largest street protests in decades, which were organised by people fed up with the restrictions.
According to a report from Financial Times, While the relaxation sent a wave of relief through Chinese society, much uncertainty remains and the move was not met with universal acclaim.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert and a critic of China’s reliance on lockdowns, said China risked unleashing a new wave of virus mutations on the world if it doesn’t “mount and implement a proactive vaccination campaign.”
“Whenever you have a large wave of transmissions of a virus, you give it ample opportunity to mutate,” Fauci said Wednesday at an event organized by the Financial Times newspaper.
Fauci further added, “And when you give a virus opportunity to mutate, that allows it to form potentially new variants. And once you get a brand-new variant, that could have an impact on the rest of the world.”
Beijing has been urged by Fauci and other foreign health officials to import Western COVID-19 vaccines based on mRNA technology because they are thought to be more efficient than the inactivated vaccines produced by China. Such calls have thus far been ignored by Chinese authorities.
The difficulties China faces are made worse by the fact that very few individuals have been exposed to the virus under “zero COVID, “most people lack natural antibodies.
Although officially China is still pursuing “zero COVID, “which aims to monitor and eradicate all infections, but recent actions seem to suggest that the name is only left the same but all the restrictions it entailed have been dropped.
China’s official death toll is 5,235 since the start of the pandemic, versus a US count of 1.1 million.
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