People are far too concerned with the potential of new and worrisome COVID variants evolving in China, one of the countrys top scientists said Wednesday. The Eastern superpower is currently experiencing some of the darkest days of the entire pandemic, with what is almost certainly the largest surge experienced by any country since the novel virus was discovered there in late 2019.
The world should completely calm down from the fear that there are new variants or special variants circulating in China, George Gao, professor at the Institute of Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and former head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters on Wednesday.
A study published in The Lancet on Wednesday by Gao and colleagues, including several from the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, found no evidence of new variants among 413 genetically sequenced samples collected between Nov. 14 and Dec. 20, 2022.
Although our data were only from Beijing, the results could be considered a snapshot of China, due to the frequent population exchange and the presence of circulating strains with high transmissibility, the authors wrote.
Experts have eyed China for the potential evolution of new variants, given its massive population and widespread lack of COVID exposure, prior to the relaxing of restrictions in December. Rampant COVID spread gives the virus a statistically better chance of spawning a new, more dangerous variant, many scientists have said.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, agrees with Gao, however. COVID variants evolve to evade immunity that exists in a populationand China had precious little immunity prior to the lifting of so-called zero COVID restrictions in December, he tells Fortune.
Thus, its not surprising that no concerning variants arose there, despite media speculation, Adalja says. The data from China is backed up by surveillance of individuals who have traveled to China, showing these variants to be well characterized versions of Omicron that are not particularly concerning.
Dr. Ryan Gregorya COVID variant tracker and biology professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, who has been assigning street names like Kraken to high-flying COVID variants like XBB.1.5tells Fortune that the sample examined in Gaos study is hardly representative. While its estimated that a few billion Chinese have been infected since December, the study only looks at a few hundred cases over one month, in one city.
New variants would not be expected to show up that soon, he says, adding that no one expected new variants to emerge from post-zero COVID China right away. The issue is what evolves there now.
While its unreasonable to single out China as the worlds sole COVID evolution threat, it would be equally foolhardy to pretend that variants arent evolving there, he adds. This study certainly doesnt provide strong evidence that nothing new is emerging in China.
While Gaos study has a comforting takeaway, it doesnt mean we should let our guard down, Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, tells Fortune.
New variants can occur at any time, and China is a big country with an outbreak that is still robust, he said. The risk is not over yet.
Omicron subvariants BA.5.2, dubbed Triton, and BF.7, dubbed Minotaur, accounted for 90% of sequenced cases in Gaos study. Both are spin-offs of BA.5, which dominated globally this summer. BA.5 and its descendants continue to dominate globally, though are on the decline, according to the WHO.
Globally, 10.5 million new cases of COVID, and more than 90,000 COVID deaths, were reported over the last 28 days, the WHO said in a Wednesday report, adding the numbers are undoubtedly underestimated. Recent reports of cases and deaths have been fueled by the Western Pacific region, namely China, the report noted.
Of the more than 70,000 COVID sequences shared globally over the past month, more than 99.6% were Omicron strains, according to the WHO.
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